Hi all,
sorry about the sporadic blogging at the moment - please see the student blogs which we have managed to write on a couple of days this term. The demands of reports and sharing night have slowed up the blogging but as we slowly return to normality I will try and throw a few comments out into cyberspace. Just a quick word today before I head to another meeting - today we spent some time studying deontology and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. This is part of our belief systems and is a natural progression from our discussions about utilitarianism (deontology is opposed to consequentialist arguments). If you get the chance you could continue the deontological vs consequentialist debate - is an action morally justified if it attends to a universal rule (here we used Kant's categorical imperative - only act if the action is something you would agree everyone could do) or is an action morally justified if it results in good consequences? As always when we do philosophy, I am excited at the way the students quickly hone in on key points of interest and debate that mirror the discussions I have studied over the years. Today they quickly recognised how the categorical imperative excludes lying, suicide, stealing and murder from moral actions - and of course many of these match most people's intuitions (which Kant wanted to do). Anyway - it wasn't all we did today but it would be a great thing to discuss and reinforce if you have the opportunity and/or inclination. Meeting time...
Cheers, Scott.
Kia ora from the first day of term 4.
We have a very busy term ahead of us (see the curriculum overview in the Pakiki newsletter for all the details). On top of our busy classroom schedule I am writing reports at the moment which means not a lot of time after school for things like the blog. So, I put my thinking cap on and have decided to get the students to write the blog as their end of day reflections. I have created a page for each class ( you can find it on the left pane). I hope you get a chance to read what we have been up to and engage with your children with some of the big ideas we are looking at this term. The belief systems unit has already created a lot of stimulating and thoughtful discussion and is a great one to talk about at home, given everyone has a perspective to share (a little less expertise needed than quantum physics as well : ). We will discuss philosophical, religious and political belief systems over the next few weeks, so hopefully there is something for everyone.
Cheers, Scott.
Kia ora from day 26
This morning started with the students writing out their timetables. Today’s brief included a deadline for having their term’s work collated, passion project, quantum concept and game systems. Of course, we also had chess and I worked with all the students reflecting on our Dabrowski/nadpodbudliwosc study. The key idea of this has been self-reflection - a concious analysis of our self as a learner and how we can use this analysis to improve our learning practices and patterns.
Luke spent the morning completing his double slit experiment keynote. He created the rest of his slides and I scaffolded him we to edit his project. His project now explains what an interference pattern is, what causes it and what is surprising about light creating one. William started on his excellent chess project adding arrows to show the fork moves and adding diagrams to some slides for greater clarity. He has prepared his project at an excellent level for many of us at Pakiki (myself included). He also worked with Nathan to create a series of questions for their quantum board-game. This process was an excellent insight in to the knowledge and understanding the two had gathered on quantum physics. Finn worked on a hilarious and informative Schrodinger’s Cat keynote; Madeline organised her folder; Aaron wrote the next segment of his story; Lauren brainstormed and categorised information for her fairy- tale board game as well as did some excellent research on her ballet project. Lauren and I invested some time discussing the role of sources in building an argument. Casper collated his evolution passion project and worked in his group on the board game characters. Matthew completed a fantastic stykz animation explaining entanglement; he also worked with Connor on their digital story. Aidhan worked on his board game characters and rules. Annie and Katy have begun another boardgame about a zoo visit and Madeline wrote a critique of their first one. I made the team pitch their new project to me before proceeding with resources and their new game sounds like it has potential to be a sound improvement over their first.
We started the afternoon filling out the final part of our KWL on quantum physics. Then we turned back to our own timetables.
This afternoon most of us invested time in our term review. It was becoming obvious many of us had a bit of a gap around Einstein's theory of special relativity (surprise, surprise : ) especially with regard to space/length (from what I have researched about it length contracts and time dilates ... we were pretty onto the time thing but not so good on space - any parents want to pitch in on this please do : ) ...so, anyway we reviewed the clips around classical and special relativity. It was great to see how interested the students were to review these ideas.
Cheers all - an enjoyable learning day.
Kia ora - day 25
Today we started with a creative thinking warm-up - think of 10 different uses for a pumpkin. There were a number of original ideas, my favourite was a footstool for a panda : ) We then did a brief affective domain lesson inspired by the self-reflection required in Dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration. Today we were reflecting on identifying learning activities we are able to sustain focus at for a long period of time, and learning activities that we need to do in short, sharp bursts. The students listed some activities for themselves in each category. Then they constructed a timetable for the day, taking on board what they had just reflected on. Exactly what they had to today was given by me, and the learning priorities were outlined BUT the students were able to decide when they did what and how they broke their day up. This proved successful for most of the students - some divided their activities up, others did large blocks of one thing then switched. The rest of the morning was spent with a variety of passion projects, quantum concepts and some game reflections going on. HIghlights were Christopher's "meaning of art" writing, Madeline and my discussion about entanglement (it drew in Nathan and WIlliam too); the next stage of Aaron's political revenge saga; Annie's increased pace in her llama study and William's joy at analysing Kasparov's chess expertise, Finn's comparison of Age of Empire's version of the siege of Malta with the real thing.
This continued until John arrived for chess. We first reflected on the difficulties in teaching chess and then decided which things were most important to teach first - objectives, checkmate, check, positions and movement. There was a major upset when Nathan defeated William at chess challenges following our lessons. I am sure someone of William's skill will bounce back quickly - watch out next week Nathan : )
After lunch we had a visitor, Jason, come and talk to us about distributed computing. This is the research model where you send small parts of a very big problem out to multiple computers instead of requiring one super computer to do the job for you. Jason showed us the Boinc site which acts as a central point for researchers to locate their work and some of the sites- Einstein at home (looking for planets and solar systems, SETI (looking for extra terrestrials) and other sites exploring solutions to all kinds of major problems. Thanks very much for an informative and interesting visit!
Jason and Aidhan showing off the galaxy map home computers around the world are helping to construct with distributed computing.
Cheers team, see you next week.
Kia ora from Buddy Day
A fun filled day with most of the bringing buddies from their normal school so they could experience a Pakiki Day. Thanks to all the buddies who joined in today. We started with some creative thinking tasks to warm up our minds - we modified Cluedo to give it a N.Z theme and created a computer game character from some random shapes. We also had a great visit from a civil engineer talking about how he got into the profession, what engineers do and how bridges work. Here's a quick visual diary outlining our Wednesday learning. Cheers!
Jason explains how bridges stay up
Jason tests the strength of Aaron, Finn, Austin and Billy's winning design
William prepares his design for testing
Mr. K helps the team measure their design
Engineers of the future : )
Testing boardgames with our buddies making suggested changes.
Working on Heroes and Monsters.
Joel gets Medieval with William, Aaron and Christopher's game.
Assessing the fantasy world of Nathan, Aidhan and Casper.
John and Lauren teach chess to some budding beginners.
Lady Gaga and entourage
Famous young pop star, Justin... Beaver?
Caesar and his troops
Iron man gives us a wave
Minnie Mouse and crew
Blind Ninja or Zorro? You decide
Kia ora - Day 23
Today most of the morning was a games session. The students were given the option of investing their time on their talent projects or on their game design. Madeline chose to work on her passion project while the other members of her game group - Lauren, Annie and Katy worked on their YouTube game ( a game about some of the topical clips most children seem to be keen on at the moment). Madeline is creating an expose of Wednesday Pakiki for her passion project. If all goes well she may have made a small advertisement for us! Connor and Matthew also split their time and labour between working on their digital story (passion project) and their board game. Their game involves gathering gold and troops to take over a castle. You roll dice then move either diagonally, horizontally or vertically trying to land on a square that gives you the equipment you need. Whoever takes over the castle wins.The rest of the class decided to work on game design - it seems highly motivating for them. There was some very good progress today with all the teams reaching a point where they could test their prototypes. WIlliam and Luke had a short round of their Middle Ages quiz/battle game; Christopher and Jake played a round of their Worlds at War - a turn based dice game that involves trying to accumulate weapons to challenge your opponent. Casper, Nathan and Aidhan have made another military turns based game called "Heroes of War". You collect resources and build up your arsenal in order to defeat your opponents. Notice a pattern here? : )
After morning tea we reflected on our our morning achievements and plotted the next step for our game. For many of us the next step is writing instructions. This will have us ready to test our games on our buddies the following week. We then brainstormed some product options for our quantum investigations and moved into chess. Today John's lesson was about the kings gambit opening. This is an adventurous opening that sets the game rolling quickly but white needs to be a little careful to avoid an early checkmate.
After lunch we started investigating various areas of quantum thinking. There were quite a few students away on a "Mathalon" but the rest of us dug into working out Schrodinger's cat, many worlds theories, entanglement and why, if atoms are mostly space, can't we e.g. walk through walls. Matthew created a neat stykz animation showing entanglement, Katy and Annie started creating a model of Schrodinger's cat thought experiment, Christopher and Jake are creating a keynote on the same experiment, Lauren is investigating atoms, space and solidity, while Casper and Aidhan were working on the idea of multiple universes. Some good thinking team - I really like the way many of you persisted at grasping some difficult and slightly crazy concepts.
Cheers, Scott.
Kia ora from Day 22 (day 21 was with the reliever)
Today we started with a creative thinking activity - the students had to think of a use for exploding nails and sell their product. There was a wide range of idea (though many of the boys went for destroying applications : ) . Christopher and Luke are selling their nails as an alternative to dynamite for moving rock to discover expensive jewels and minerals; Katy and Annie's nails are used to drive off and infuriate older brothers; William and Casper's are a new portable hunting device; Matthew, Connor and Jake all came up with military applications; Madeline and Lauren's nails were to instantly turn fruit inot juice - like a portable blender; and Nathan and Aidhan's nails were exploding art paint bombs. Great ideas team.
We moved into a free flow session where some children were working on passion projects while others and others were on game design. They swapped over after play. This morning I worked with Connor and Matthew. They have been working on a joint project compiling information about super volcanoes, the huge volcano on Mars, and writing a short story about Mars' volcano. They are planning on publishing their fiction as a digital story. Today we edited their finished story and they started gathering appropriate photos for their digital publishing. Annie has been creating a blog about llamas and alpacas. This has meant learning skills how to create and use a wiki as well as researching her subject. Today I looked over her work and we reviewed her plan noticing the need to include questions that strive for depth and complexity. This is her challenge going forward. Finn took a look at Age of Empires 3 which he is reviewing for its historical accuracy. He has examined the start of the single campaign which begins with the Great Siege of Malta by the Ottoman Empire. He found out that this actually took place in the mid 16th century. The characters in the game's story line are not accurate however the order of knights, weapons and techniques they use are - right down to particular fencing schools and sword moves of the time. Next week Finn will look at a real life character from the siege as an alternative person the game makers might have used to increase their accuracy. Other students' passion progress included Christopher completing some birds-eye 3-d art, Aaron achieving another half page of his assassination tale, Katy getting her architecture study ready for presentation, Lauren collating her Shakespeare study, Madeline taking photos and adding parts to her keynote about Pakiki. Nathan, Casper and Aidhan were busy on their board game all morning. Their game is a cross between a role-playing and board game. The object is to stay alive in the face of starvation, of others competing for resources, natural disasters and the like. It is great to see econ-island wasn't lost on them : ) I hope they can remember the economic concepts as well!
Immediately after play we went headlong into game design with groups brainstorming contexts, creating boards and cards and so on. The motivation is intense! Sitting back listening and observing the groups at work I can hear students sharing and critiquing ideas, establishing a dynamic division of labour, problem solving challenges, encouraging and judging their work as they go. It really is impressive and apart from getting things going and being around to bounce ideas with students I am almost redundant during this phase! The only reason students were catching up with me was to report excitedly on what their games are about and the progress they are making. I wonder if my assistance will be more in demand once we start writing instructions.
At chess today we learnt a new piece of chess jargon - zugzwang. This German word refers to when a player whose turn it is to move who has no move that does not worsen his position. Such a player is said to be in zugzwang.
After lunch we turned to our quantum study. Today we did the double slit experiment with light. We used a laser held in a vice, a piece of glass that had a blackened area (we used a candle to make this) and we scratched fine double slits into the soot using a paper clip. WE shot the laser through the slits onto the white board and viola - an interference pattern. We revisited our understanding of why waves interfere with each other to create this pattern and we wrote up our experiment on computers. This experiment was a lot of fun and was very successful.
Cheers team, Scott.
Today is day 20
This morning we started with a creative thinking exercies "what if". We aimed for fluency - this meant as many ideas as we could. Matthew and Nathan thought you could make a city in the clouds if clouds had string tied to them (they imagined tying houses to the string). Katy continued her moustache theory of braininess - what if a scientist shaved his moustache - would he lose his smarticle particles? (finding humour anyone?) Connor thought there would be sky clocks if there strings hanging from the cloud - then everyone could tell the time at anytime. Luke made up his own what if... you were lighter than a feather. Wednesday's score was 5.7 ideas per student on average. They just beat Tuesday. After this we played and analysed games for a second time. AIdhan, Nathan, Katy, Annie all started creating their game. Nathan and AIdhan's is a turn based board role-playing game. Annie and Katy's is a board game kind of like snakes and ladders. These prototypes will be tested and improved during the term. Aaron, Luke and WIlliam played monopoly and they enjoyed it so much that WIlliam even scored it higher than chess! Matthew and Connor played mastermind. Connor liked how the game had a code you had to break using stratgey. Jake and Chris played Kogworks and didn't enjoy it becuase there wasn't enough activity ( i"m not sure they fully got the rules correct). Lauren and Madeline played battleship and they realised there was quite a bit of player control using logic to figure out where the boats were.
We then moved onto talent time. Madeline planned a project we're she investigates Pakiki kids and makes a movie explaining this on imovie. Lauren finished her Shakespeare sonnet! Fantastic. Annie found out how to upload photos on her Llama wiki. Aidhan and Nathan have merged their game analysis with their new passion project - good thinking. Jake designed ideal tanks according to his criteria, Aaron wrote more of his story - the assassination has nearly taken place, Connor started his keynote on the stages of a super volcano eruption; William found out about Legal's checkmate; Matthew wrote more of his volcano story; Luke found out some of the new materials and engines some new vehicles are using; Finn looked at the Mayflower's arrival to North America and is looking at the Spanish next week; Christopher added a rugby theme to his Otago art portfolio and Katy worked on drafting the north side of her house.
After play we looked at Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration. In a simplified version this espouses the idea of being reflective in order to identify the positive and negative conditions that occur internally and externally and which have an impact on one's learning. Today we reviewed the idea of being a reflective learner and discussed what internal conditions might affect each of us. Each student then recorded some ideas about their own internal conditions. John arrived for 40 minutes of chess before lunch. William and I were entangled in a tight battle which time stalled, William having a slight advantage when time was up.
After lunch we conducted an experiment to see how classical localised particles behave in a 'double slit' situation. This involved examining what happens to sand as it falls from a paper cup with two small slits cut into the bottom. The idea is to show that particles in the classical (non-quantum) world act as we expect them to, in this case forming a typical pattern of two piles. In our next steps we will try and observe how waves act when they interact and to see how a laser light acts when put through a double slit.
Cheers team,
Scott.
Welcome to term 3 day 2 (#19)
This morning we started with an interesting discussion from Dr. Scharpf on science's role as a predictor of what is going to happen. In doing so he was able to describe the shift from classical relativity to einstein's version of relativity and to introduce the shift to thinking about the world in a quantum way. We also got to hear about a hypothesis (from the Greek word "to suppose") and theory (from the Greek "to speculate"). This is the third time I had heard Dr. Scharpf's talk but I was still engrossed in every word (except when I had to leave for a few minutes :( and found more questions springing into my head than I possibly had the time to ask him. I hope there were similar feelings for many of the students and judging form the way they approached the next task we did I think their interest was indeed heightened. When Dr. Scharpf left we watched a quick national geographic clip about muons and research into how we can make these strange, tiny, heavy electron type entities travel almost at the speed of light and bring them forward in time (in a sense) by making them "live" longer than they normally would. The students then got to play with their creative side and imagine what else might be. I was wrapped to see so many of them focus their ideas on light speed, the atomic and subatomic world and start to play with some of the language we had been exploring through last weeks learning, Dr. Scharpf's discussion and our video clips.
We switched to talent time with an emphasis on being reflective about our learning. Some students make better progress on these projects than others and I am stressing we recognise and verbalise the problems we face and the strategies we have tried. Then we need to ask were those strategies successful? If they weren't did we try something new? Today's talent had William dig deeper into the scholar's checkmate and find strategies to counter it and defeat your opponent; Finn found out about Christopher Columbus and is challenging himself to keep his overall question in mind as he researches the details (to help him decide what to ignore and what to grab); Casper explained the evolution of one of his characters form a sea to a land animal and we talked about the evolutionary process, Lauren struggled on to write a couple more lines of her sonnet - she is getting there!, Katy contacted someone from the engineering association to talk with her about bridges and investigated a stunning bridge design - the Helix Bridge. She is practising her paraphrasing and made some very good progress today - well done Katy, keep at it because it is an important skill to have : ) Christopher fine tuned his art plan to focus on an Otago theme and continued creating his first piece, Connor drafted the process that leads to a super volcano explosion and Matthew wrote the next part of his science fiction story.
We took another look at Dabrowski and his ideas of nadpodbudliwosc and today the students completed a stock-take of their own super-sensitivities. John arrived for a lesson on the importance of the centre squares in chess openings and challenged the children to think about what and why the moves being made a good or not. The students played a combined game against John and he helped them analysed each move and consider their options.
Kia ora from Day 18, the first day of a new term!
This morning we got straight to it and after brief hello's were into our talent projects. I had some new talent ideas and projects put in place for students who were wondering where to go next and we had quite a few take up the idea of digital storytelling - some were integrating the idea into their existing projects - should make for some fun and interesting products. I worked with Finn on developing a new history project. He is researching the exploration and initial colonisation of the Americas. We found some great books to help us on the Pakiki shelves and he has already constructed a timeline. Next week he will decide on two or three key characters, and several key events to go into further depth on. Finally, when he has collated and presented his information he will be able to play and review Age of Empires 3 ( a video game about the conquest of the Americas by Europeans). This will allow him to practice his critical thinking skills, to practice developing criteria for judgement and dovetails into our systems study on games. Of course, the idea that he could play a video game about historical events also has him very keen - now the challenge is to harness that motivation and come up with a good research study prior to the review : )
At the same time as this was going on some of the students were playing and analysing board games we have in the classroom. Over the next two terms students will have analysed games, then created games of their own. I have created guide sheets to help their analysis based on gaming principles. If anyone has games they are willing to share, or knows anyone that is part of a gaming club please let us know : )
While the gaming study carries over the next two terms the main systems focus for this term is quantum physics. Today we started with Einstein's theory of relativity (this is not quantum physics but is an important preceding idea to the development of quantum ideas). We watched a great animated video I found that unpacks Einstein's central ideas. We stopped the video frequently to talk over what we were seeing and hearing, as it wasn't always straight forward. The students were well engaged and even the non-scientifically motivated amongst us seemed interested and had plenty of questions - it is hard not to have some wow moments when you start talking about how time and space change depending on how fast we are going, and how incredibly wacky things get once we get to the speed of light (according to Einstein). At the end of the 15 min video we conducted our own experiment with chocolate to see if we could measure the speed of light. We took a bar of chocolate and placed it in a microwave with the turning device removed. This allowed the microwaves to travel through the chocolate unevenly, giving us several defined 'hotspots'. We then measured the space between the hotspots. This told us half the length of a microwave. We knew the frequency of the waves - 2450 megahertz (2,450,000,000 waves per second, I believe). Now, all we had to do was multiply the frequency by the length (our number - 6.3 cm x 2) and we would have the speed of the microwave. Given that microwaves are a form of light we were hoping to find the speed of light - we ended up about 8 million metres/ sec out - not too bad out of 300 odd million. We figured our measurement would have been slightly out. William showed exceptional striving for accuracy, refusing to give up and using a trial and error approach to discover what our measurement should have been - he got it eventually, requiring 7-8 decimal places. We finished our experiment by eating the chocolate, of course : )
John arrived for chess and we learnt how to notate our games. This has the benefit of being able to learn from chess books and being able to analyse our games for mistakes or alternatives.
After lunch we organised our work from the previous term (we normally do this on the last day of term but with open day in the last week we never got to that). Finally, we used our creativity to make some creative pictures out of squiggles on a page. We then rated our originality - Wednesday got 13 - well done!
Great to see you all again,
Scott.
William shows off his strongly constructed truss bridge - great persistence and accuracy!
Jake's fantastic Battle of Arnhem project - study and model. Brilliant : )
Kia ora from Day 16
Today was an intense day of economics. We completed two Econ Island lessons so that we could get into the simulation proper. First thing this morning, having checked our shares, we auctioned the plots of land on Econ Island. The bidding was fierce, especially for the stone quarries. Several astute bidders, like Madeline and William, waited until people were short on money and then swooped up some bargains. This was a lengthly process but it sets us up for the rest of the unit and was a lot of fun.
Once the auction was finished we worked on talent time. Several new passion projects are being designed. Casper is creating a new civilization; Matthew and Connor are investigating volcanoes; Katie has been drawing scale designs of bridges and is not unpacking their key features, today she looked at how arch and suspension bridges work; Annie found some excellent resources for her Llama study; Aaron is starting a writing journal including poetry and short stories.
After interval we set about finishing our critical reviews. Many students are publishing final drafts, several students have finished completely. This work shows that most of them can now put an argument together using evidence to support their claims and understand the importance of representation in a text. As students were finishing this work they moved onto Chess, although sadly John was unable to come today. Finn showed excellent attention to defending his pieces in his game.
After lunch we moved into the second Econ Island lesson. The key new learning today was the concept of opportunity cost. At this point decisions students make stay with them for the remainder of the simulation - for better or for worse. The aim from here on in is to compete to earn the most money but at the same time to increase the standard of living as an island as a whole. It was notable that students were both being competitive and cooperative in their economic dealings with each other. Nonetheless, as is to be expected in a fledging economy such as ours the standard of living was not high - in fact it was in the negatives. Finally, each student wrote about which style of economy they want their island to adopt and why.
Well done team, look forward to more learning next week. Scott
Kia ora from Day 15
This morning we were all excited making our pin hole reflectors so we could watch the transit of Venus. After a bit of trial and error and some fine help from Glenn we were up and running and could see the tiny dot move across our reflected sun. Finn, Aaron and Connor were particularly interested in our astronomy. We intermixed this with talent time this morning which worked well while a large number of us were missing, doing ICAS exams. Lauren brainstormed her sonnet ideas and found out the structure that a sonnet demands. Matthew and Connor started the tricky task of paraphrasing the notes they had gathered on Archimedes' war machines. Jake watched some discovery documentaries on tanks; Christopher wrote his reflection on his animation project; and Madeline began publishing her journal articles, poems and stories. onAfter morning tea we worked on our critical reviews. Some of these arguments are starting to take shape nicely and we'll have a few published for final edits by next week. John arrived for chess - today's lesson was about sacrificing pieces for greater advantage. There were several successful challenges today. William and I had a 1-1 battle, sadly (for me) he won the second game which means he has jumped to the top of the ladder - well done William you can read more about this game at the pakikichess wiki. There has been a definite improvement across the class in chess this year which is fantastic and a testimony to the expertise and enthusiasm John brings to our Pakiki day.
After lunch we moved onto Econ island. Today we were introduced to the island proper. At this stage of the game the students are battling for survival by trying to carefully maintain the scarce resources their island has. Sadly, many did not survive past the first round. WIth supplies so scarce prices were high and students were willing to pay whatever to try and secure their basic needs. We had time to play the second lesson with the game board. The students proved themselves to be fast learners and overcompensated in the second lesson, harvesting too little to keep everyone fed and warm. They did notice that a way around the problems they were facing, in our purely free market island scenario, was to introduce some government regulation - this will happen a little later.
Well done team, see you all next week. Scott.
Hi from Day 14
This morning we checked our share portfolio performances then invested 20 minutes discussing some of the ideas and knowledge I gained at Tuesday’s visit to the Forsyth Barr offices ( we go in late June : ) The students quickly came up with creative ideas to change how we work on the sharemarket at Pakiki, including creating their own companies and having a mini stock exchange open for a few minutes in the morning.
We switched to critical literacy and played text detectives sleuthing for evidence to support our arguments about Granny O’Grimm’s representation and how this helps convey the author’s message. This was clearly new learning for many of our students who are continuing to develop their skills and understanding of what gathering evidence to support an argument. Nonetheless, we made some progress and will continue to hone our critical literacy skills next week.
Before morning tea we found some time to engage with our talent time. A number of students have completed their projects and our now at the stage where they need to review their work. Thinking metacognitively is a crucial part of the Pakiki experience but not necessarily the most enjoable for all of us. There is often the temptation to just get on with the next project. While this energy is admorable, reflecting on one’s work helps us improve our future studies.
We split our time after morning tea between talent, chess and a community of inquiry. Today’s community of inquiry looked at another aspect of Renzulli’s theory of giftedness. Today we explored whether giftedness was something we were born with or something we develop through our environment. Here are the notes from our discussion:
Madeline agrees with Dr. Renzulli. She thinks that you can’t just be born with intelligence it is more that you grow up in a certain environment e.g. if you had scientists and/or artists as parent there is a good chance you would be creative because you would be exposed to this kind of thinking. Lauren kind of agrees and disagrees because you might be born with some kind of gift but you could also learn or develop a gift (even a different one to the one you were born with). Jake thinks that you can be born with intelligence inherited from the intelligence e.g. of your parents but you can also develop it. You don’t have to be born with it to have a gift developed though. Casper thinks that you can be born with the ability to learn a particular thing - that doesn’t mean you are gifted it just means you have potential but if you weren’t born with that potential you still could become good at it, e.g. if you want too but you will probably have to try harder than the person born with the gift. Aidhan agrees with Lauren, Jake and Casper that you might be born with potential but you still have to work at it. Luke agrees with this view as well. Maddie adds there is always room for improvement. Annie thinks that intelligence has to be developed rather than something that you born with it. She argues, from personal experience, that her family all read a lot and this is where her talent and love for reading comes from - she was given the chance to develop it through her environment and not her genetic make-up. Katy thinks that everyone has a gift that they are born with it but it needs the right environment for you to “discover” it. Connor thinks that you can be born with a gift but if you don’t have a passion for it you may never develop it; he also says you might develop gifts you are not born with as well. Matthew agrees with Connor because you don’t just do something once and be good at it, you have to like it and work at it to get better at it. William agrees more with Matthew and Connor - you can be born with a gift and you can develop things to be good at them but you if you are not born with it you won’t become gifted. Nathan thinks you can be born with something but you can use your ability to learn (= intelligence for Nathan) in order to get good at something you are not born with and then this becomes a “inherited gift” for future generations, hence nurture turns into nature. Amy is not sure because it is hard to decide what side to believe. Aaron thinks giftedness is not something that we are born with but develops out of our passions.
At chess today John explained to the students how to use pieces to support each other in the end game, and how to be careful using the queen in the early stages of a game.
After lunch we read Frindel, and briefly discussed the original of some words e.g. “welfare”. We finished our day with lesson 8 of Econ Island, today we explored a mixed market economy and the students experienced the joys of taxation, amidst much protest. However, many thought this was a fair way of doing things because it alleviated the problem of scarcity for those who missed out on resources. Others did argue that it was unfair and only encouraged laziness. I’m sure I’ve heard that argument before somewhere. Next we will be starting the Econ Island board game, I look forward to seeing how it goes.
Cheers for a good day,
Scott
Hi from Day 13
Today we had a new class member join - a big Pakiki welcome to Luke. Luke seemed to easily settle into the Pakiki Wednesday whanau and I look forward to learning with him throughout the rest of the year. We started the day quickly checking and calculating our shares - mostly bad news; hurray for Ryman and Trade Me both of whom are keeping student's portfolios looking not tooo worse for wear. We moved onto our community of inquiry about giftedness - today we discussed differences between school and creative giftedness (Renzulli argues that later is a better indicator and is more important). Here are the notes from our discussion:
Christopher says normal school is more boring and restricted but creative thinking lets your mind spread and lets you think about whatever you want. William says school wants you to be intelligent in specific subjects at the expense of other subjects. Creative thinking encourages intelligence at different an more unusual things that might not be done at school. Aidhan, Nathan and Christopher think that normal school you can only use your intelligent in certain subjects but creative schools just encourage intelligence per se without the restrictive subjects. Annie agrees with William because school emphasises curriculum subjects but not others - say it was something that you don’t do at school - you wouldn’t even get to know if you were good at it. Resources sadly limit choices. Casper thinks that normal school just want you to come out like a robot - everyone has the same knowledge (think about national standards e.g.) but creative thinking/giftedness lets you come out the way you want to come out. Madeline sort of agrees with Casper and Annie because resources do limit creative choices and in school usually creative stuff comes after the national standards subjects. This is a bad thing on one hand because you have to do the creative things outside of school but it can be a good thing if your learning needs don’t let you do well at creative things. Connor says normal school is boring for the people who don’t like the subject choices. Luke kind of agrees with Casper because some things are too easy for some people, these people would be better off to be able to do more creative thinking subjects. Lauren agrees with Amy that the school subjects can be useful to apply to creative things. Aaron thinks normal schools hold you behind with your creativeness and creative learning let you expand your creativeness. Katy thinks school is boring because most of the learning is for the rest of the class and not for you!! Matthew also finds school boring because you have to do much more of the subjects you don’t want to do and only a little of the one you do want too. School giftedness is about school standards and then after that you are left to your own - this is good because I get to draw but it is bad because no-one helps me get better at that.
Talent time followed. Matthew and Connor tried an experiment to move tinfoil attached to a paper clip with a charged balloon. They successfully moved the foil, wrote the experiment up and considered atomically what was making this happen. Amy and Lauren practiced their play and brainstormed their sonnet topic. A number of students are busy getting metacognitive and reviewing their passion projects - Katy and Annie reviewed their first passion project - the friendship bracelet business; Aaron and Finn reviewed their animation projects; William is reviewing his bridge building. Nathan continued to problem solve his game maker; Aidhan created an animation; Christopher remade his wonderful magician's animation (the file had become corrupted); Madeline wrote another piece for the journal - she decided all journals need a "how to" section and made hers "how to annoy a younger sibling" : ) Casper made a short stop motion animation and loaded it onto FramebyFrame. Luke wrote a list of things he loves to do at home and school so that we could see what might be an area of passion for him - there was an obvious link between a love for thinking about future transport and lego design, so we began planning a lego digitial design project that involves first conceptualising and sketching future transport ideas, then transferring his ideas into a digitial 3d model. Great start Luke!
After morning tea we watched an award winning short animation - Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty, a humorous movie that asks us to think about how society views the elderly. We used our critical literacy approach to discuss the representation of Granny and how this helps get the message across. Here are some brief notes we took: Granny O’Grimm : Representation - Wednesday
“How does the authors’ representation of the characters help get the message across?”
The message is “don’t judge elderly people as useless or not worth inviting to things” (Lauren).
elderly fairy in the movie is the same as Granny O’Grimm so the viewer know’s that this is granny’s experience
She turns to the mirror when she is describing how it feels to be left out - show’s reflection of her feelings...she is talking to herself rather than actually reading the story (Maddie)
Her tone changes from soft to angry when she is talking about being left out - get’s the point across strongly
body language - hanging onto teddy and bedpost telling how sad the fairy feels - violin playing, granny is hesitant and has a far away expression
sarcastic
bitter
rudely mimics young - show the young people don’t care
Next week we will re-watch the film and add evidence from the text to support our claims, as part of a critical review of the film. The general feeling today was that the authors have done a good job of using representation to get their point across. The question will be can our Pakiki students use evidence and reasoned argument to get their point across in their reviews. Chess rounded out the morning session. William bravely took on John, our tutor and ended with a stalemate. Matthew played a thoughtful and careful game and Finn successfully challenged his way to third on the ladder. After lunch we managed to get two rounds of econ island in - which is great because Wednesday have now caught up with the other classes. Today we examined a command economy and a free market economy and compared them. The general preference was that the free market economy was more exciting and had more point to it (the lure of marshmallows, i.e. incentives, is stron on Wednesday : ), though one or two ( e.g.Aaron) thought that the command economy was fairer. Next week we will look at a mixed market economy, like NZ, and the students will be introduced to the joy of taxation : )
Cheers all see you next week! Scott!
Kia ora from Day 12 A quick look at our nzx50 started this morning and some of the children were able to inform us about the happenings in Europe - Finn in particular seemed well up with the news - well done Finn. We followed that with the second part of our investigation into giftedness via a critique of Renzulli. Today we discussed whether intelligence changed over time and place. Here are some brief notes taken during our discussion: Lauren and Amy say things that are considered intelligent change in different places; Finn adds the e.g. that if you spoke English in some countries that speak something else you might seem more intelligent for that reason than if you were in a country that already spoke english; William disagrees with Finn - he thinks you might be considered not intelligent if you couldn’t speak their own language Christopher agrees with Renzulli because you can be in a certain places require a certain kind of intelligence. Finn adds it is relative to the people who are around you. Casper agrees with Renzulli too because if you could unlock a door in the modern age that is average but if you could have done it in the cave age you would be a God.; Nathan and Aidhan disagree with Renzulli because if intelligence = learning skills to adapt to your environment then making stone tools is the same level of intelligence as fixing super engines in the modern age. I suggest this is also what Renzulli is saying. William, Nathan, Aidhan and I clarify by agreeing that perhaps what=intelligence never changes what does change is how the intelligence manifests itself.
After Renzulli, we went straight to talent time. Matthew and Connor had a look at the differences between putting the balloon on a dry wall and one that had steam on it. The idea is to compare static electricity in the drier winter months with the more humid air of summer. They found out that the balloon would not stay for any length of time, when charged, if the wall was a little moist. Aaron transferred his stopmotion onto FramebyFrame (a free Mac software programme designed especially for stop motion) and he also helped Frances who had created a jumping frog animation. There were a number of children ready for planning today. This is negotiated with me. Jake planned a tank history project with a focus on research skills, especially dissemination; Annie also focussed on research except she is doing a study on llamas; Katy planned a project on architecture to nurture her current passion on design.
After morning tea we started our critical literacy lessons - these focus on ideas around becoming increasingly aware of the choices authors make in constructing texts, learning to read between the lines at what is implied or what agendas might influence an author; examining representation, exclusion and inclusion and being aware that the different knowledge and experience that readers bring to texts influences their perception. Today we unpacked these terms (Casper explained representation brilliantly as portraying something in a certain light) and watched a couple of very short animations. We discussed what representation we witnessed and considered the message the author was trying to portray. Next week we will watch a third short clip and begin to critically review the movie using our critical literacy language.
John arrived for chess - a tragic day for Mr. K who was beaten by a student (well done William) for the first time. I guess I should be pleased to see the youngsters developing so well but...no... I'm plotting revenge instead : ) (though I don't fancy my chances : ) There was a little movement on the ladder today, though it was clear we have some children really into chess and others not so in this class. I do consider it a valuable (and compulsory) part of the programme so please, kids, remember to give it your best shot - that's what Pakiki kids strive to do.
After lunch we returned to Econ Island - today was the first day of real competition in the market with all the businesses stocking the same items - which of course drove prices down. The rest of the students were negotiating high wages and low prices in their attempt to end up with the most $, as well as their basic needs. Finn, Casper, Aaron, and Connor all proved astute bargainers with Frances winning the business section. We discussed competition and the law of supply and demand in our account of the scenario. Speaking of Frances, today was her last day with us after almost a year and a half, as she is shifting to Southland. Frances has proved herself to be an outstanding student with strengths in creativity and accuracy. We will miss her a lot and wish her all the best - we know she gives nothing less! Ka kite Frances - keep in touch.
To the rest of you all, I will see you next week - keep watching those shares; see if you can predict what's happening next! : ) Scott.
Kia ora from Day 11,
We started our day talking about things that influence the market and how we can keep astride of what's going on. We looked at a news site online to see what has been happening in Europe lately and discussed how these political changes have an impact on the market. We then referred back to our complex and chaotic systems and started wondering which one the market fits into; how predictable is it? We then checked our investments and worked out whether we had earned any money or not. It was a mixed bag for most of us, thought the NZX50 hadn't opened today when we checked.
Affective domain study looked at Renzulli's theory of giftedness. We explored his claim that there are many kinds of intelligences. Many of us agreed with this, though we had two other schools of thought - one that said intelligence was a singular thing that amounted to a person's ability to learn (Nathan) and that any different ways of thinking -e.g. maths compared to literacy were skills rather than intelligences; and one that said intelligence was strongly connected and depended on a person's passion. I recorded the ideas as quickly as I could and will cut and paste the record at the end of the blog for those who are interested.
We moved onto a slightly extended talent time, to try and make up some time (Wednesday's term is a bit short due to respecting ANZAC day). Frances started making a stykz animation. She created a story board and started putting it onto the computer. She had to learn the program which was a challenge. Next week she will try and get it finished. Casper started a stopmotion animation, his challenge was getting the clear pictures and having a good storyline. Next week he will try and making a second one taking care with the clarity of pictures. Jake was frustrated trying to find his published Arnhem account. He realised it wasnt done and it got typed up. Next week he will print and edit. Aidhan got all his drawings onto the computer for his animation. Next week he will try and get the timing right for the movements. Nathan suffered the challenge of the computer crahsing which made him lose his work!! Next week he will have to start this over. The lesson is to save as you go!!! Christopher also suffered computer failure - with Stykz. He moved onto stop animation. He is going to redo his stykz during lunch and play time. Next week with his stop motion he wants to add more detail. Aaron finished his non-violent stykz animation and began learning about stop motion (including how to use imovie) using Youtube clips. Next week he will start creating his movie proper. Finn finihsed stykz, started stop motion and found that it was extrememly boring for him ( a lesson in picking the right talent/passion project). Next week he is going to plan his passion project.Matthew and Connor conducted an experiment to see how long they could stick a electrically charged balloon on the wall. They did it 4 times with some success. They recorded their results and started write your experiment up. Next week they need to write their conclusions. William finihsed creating his bridge and started to test it (it looks great). The challenge was finding a good way to connect the pieces. Next week he will start to evaluate the bridge. Katy and Annie finsihed advertising for their Loud People company. Next week they will evaluate their project and plan their next one with Mr. K. Lauren and Amy practised their performance for their Shakespeare play. They made some changes (improving on Shakespeare??!). Next week they will add finishing touches and film it. Madeline wrote a poem for her journal. At first she tried one on the elements but that wasn't working so she switched to one about diamonds which came out very well. Next week she will work on some more writing for her journal - the end is in sight!
John arrived for chess tutoring. He has been helping the other classes for a couple of weeks but this is his first Wednesday due to ANZAC day and our trip to Animation Research Ltd. John has a lot of expertise and passion for chess and this has quickly transferred onto the children. I have noticed an obvious lift in excitement for chess. Today the children engaged in chess challenges and practised end game techniques with only a king vs king and queen.
After lunch we explored needs and wants, labour, leverage, wages and prices in our Econ Island simulation. We still had incentives and problems of scarcity to explore as well. Next week we introduce free market economy ideas of competition, and the law of supply and demand. We also had visitors from Clutha Valley School who came and watched some of what Pakiki Kids get up too. oh, here's the "intelligence" discussion record for you:
anybody who does something has some intelligence (Aaron) though we wouldn’t want to be only thought of an intelligent for what we do because that would be limiting (Aidhan). Madeline says we use different intelligences to do different things...e.g. talking uses word knowledge and knowledge about the subject. William kind of agrees with Madeline because different things need different intelligences...e.g. analysing is different to speaking...though Finn noted that listening needs analysing so you know what to say in response. Many of us agree that maths and art need a different kind of intelligence. Nathan argues that there is only one kind of intelligence but we have more or less of it. Casper thinks intelligence is different for different things because being intelligent at one thing doesn’t mean you are intelligent at other things. Connor agrees with Casper but also agrees with Nathan within the different types there are varying degrees. Katy wonders if intelligence can come from an obsession/passion. Nathan rebutted to say that if you had intelligence you can transfer that intelligence across areas/skills. Jake thinks that interest is more important - it is what leads to intelligence. Madeline thinks that we can say how many intelligences there are (she has heard there are 8) and we tend to be more intelligent at some than others. Annie agrees with Katy and Jake about passion being the most important factor. Matthew thinks that intelligence is something that if you have it you should be able to be good at some others, so he agrees with Nathan (at least in part). Frances also agrees with Nathan and Matthew that intelligence is something you have and can apply across areas. Lauren thinks that there might be lots of different kinds of intelligences but sometimes they are hidden in a person and you have to find them. Amy says you can be born with intelligence but also you can develop it, she also thinks it is something that you can spread across lots of areas, although she concedes that some areas don’t seem to connect too clearly to others, like maths and writing. Christopher agrees that some areas we seem to pick up easier than others so maybe there are different kinds of intelligences. Matthew says understanding is key to any intelligence, Connor says if you are good at one thing you will be good at things that are ‘related’ but not necessarily good at things that unrelated. Nathan says there is only one intelligence and that is the ability to learn but we have an acquired leaning towards acquiring some skills in some areas than others. Skills are the acquisition of knowledge and the ability to do specific things but intelligence is the ability to learn a skill in the first place.
Cheers team, look forward to seeing you all next week.
Scott.
Kia ora from Day 10, our first Wednesday in Term 2.
Today began by investing our Pakiki dollars in the NZX 50. For many of the students this was exciting stuff : ) We looked at how we could use tools on the NZX market site to identify the trading pattern each company had and we used the Numbers program (excel for macintosh) to track and graph our investments. This is part of our economic systems study for the term. We moved from this to looking over some assessment from term one and deciding goals for ourselves for the coming term. Then it was off to Animation Research Ltd. to find out what the multi-award winning business does. The team at ARL had a nice balance of activities to engage the kids and an informative tour - I had a million questions : )The animation work ARL are involved in had room for people whose talents ranged from art, design, electronics, graphics, maths, and physics. It was cool to hear the ARL team telling us they started off with passions very similar to many of our kids.A big thanks to Tom, John and all the team at ARL for providing such a great opportunity for our students to see one way they can harness their talents.
It was lunch by the time we got back to Pakiki. After lunch, we started our "Econ Island" study. This is a series of simulated activities that introduces us to a range of important economic concepts. Today started with looking at the problem of scarcity, the role of incentives, barter, and the point of money. Having taken part in the simulation the students reported on the activity using the language we had introduced. Most of the students were able to use this language in the correct context today. The trick will be remembering these concepts, so, if you get a chance to talk about any of these ideas during the week please do : ) We finished off the day with chess. We now have a chess leaderboard and the students set about challenging each other to try and ascend the ladder. Nathan and I had a game where he made some incisive early moves - well done!
See you all next week - check your investments if you get the chance! Ciao, Scott.
Hi all from the last Wednesday of term - Day 9.
Today we started off with a tech challenge - building a table that could hold as many books as possible ( we chose Horrible Histories) out of paper, 1 piece of thin card, popsicle sticks, straws and tape. We had a successful group manage to make an aesthetically satisfactory table that held 7 books - well done Aidhan, Nathan and Finn. Amy, Lauren, Katy and ANnie managed to hold 9 books but there were some stability issues and a lot of careful balancing needed. Still a very good effort. After tech challenge we rounded the morning off with talent/passion projects.
After play it was down to the serious business of reflections. I had created a term overview reflection that canvassed a lot of what we have learned over the first term. This allows me to check exactly where different kids are at with their understanding of key points and thinking tools as we move into term two. The students also had to do a short halfway progress report on their talent/passion projects and also had to reflect on pieces of work that will be included in their learning journals, at the end of the year. This was a lot of hard thinking and the students did very well. Extra well done Annie and Nathan who, having missed a few days this term, had a catch up poetry session that proved working under pressure was a good thing for these particular two students.
In the afternoon we moved into a you-choose session. This involved a series of activities the students could choose from, many of which have been ongoing throughout the term, with one easter idea thrown in for good measure. Many of the students chose chess, Christopher and Casper demonstrating excellent chess thinking skills while I engaged with their play. A number worked on talent time - Annie and Katy have met their goal for product construction and are now ready to move into advertising and sales. Matthew and Connor had a go at chess and the next step in their talent time - they managed to answer a series of questions on static electricity (Connor already had a lot of good knoweldge here) and then set about bending water with a balloon - their task next term on this will be to explain in terms of atoms what is happening when the water moves toward the charged balloon.
All in all a good last day, I hope everyone has a great Easter break and I will see you all for term 2! Cheers, Scott.
Hi from day 8 This morning we started by unpacking a couple of quotes about talent from two very talented people - George Lucas and Albert Einstein. I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive. -Albert Einstein
Everybody has talent, it’s just a matter of moving around until you’ve discovered what it is.
George Lucas
Once we had the meaning in our own words we discussed whether we agreed, disagreed or partly agreed with what George Lucas was saying. The children concluded that everybody does have a talent but Madeline noticed that circumstances (of place and socio-economic position of birth etc) can affect the kind of "talent journeys" we are able to take. We also recognised that the things different places and cultures value may alter what kind of talents are recognised in different places. Nathan added that these factors probably alter the way we manifest our talent. This discussion was the beginning of extending our affective domain studies from a study of ourselves per se, to a study of ourselves as gifted/Pakiki learners. This exploration will continue throughout the year. We followed this with more focus on our questioning skills. We read a few pages of our novel Frindle and the children questioned the viewpoints and assumptions the characters, and the author were making. We then moved into talent time mode.
Today Matthew and Connor finished their element study. Next week they begin to explore the relationship between atoms and static electricity. William created the supports for his bridge and then tried problem solving his way around how to attach them to the structure he already has. This problem is still needing solution : ) Lauren and Amy watched Midsummer NIghts Dream and Romeo and Juliet and have decided to act out a scene from the latter. They have reversed the roles of the 'Juliet death scene' and Lauren has already memorised her lines. It is great to see these students getting so excited by Shakespeare - they were practising and writing lines every opportune moments throughout the day. Madeline has already researched Victorian life and wrote a diary of a Victorian maid for her 'school journal'. She showed a very good willingness to persist and extend her thoughts on this writing task. Katy and Annie were busy creating as many bracelets as they could. They have added a bracelet/necklace package to their markets. I have bought two to use as bookmarks for Frindle : ) Finn, Casper and Christopher all worked on Stykz animation. They showed a vast improvement in getting their animations to flow today. Aidhan finished the first phase of his stopmotion! - Well done! He now has to work out how to put it onto imovie and to use green screen tricks to create the backgrounds that he wants. Frances completed her bird eats bee flipbook - well done. It is nicely detailed and carefully put together. Jake found out about the 'hunger winter' that followed Operation Market Garden, some reasons why the operation was a failure for the Allies and put together some of his own thoughts about the value of the operation. He is sounding more and more like an historian : ) Nathan worked hard on his game maker, creating some sprites (characters) and problem solving his way through some technical difficulties.
After talent time we moved into 'we are nearing the end of term' finishing mode, making sure students had finished their portraits and I am from poems. Matthew showed he enjoys creating a poetic turn of phrase and works best doing this without a lot of planning. Connor has his poem ready for a final edit, and Annie, Frances, Lauren, Amy and Aidhan all completed their portraits. The children who had their portraits painted and dry already compiled a list on what they thought made them a Pakiki Kid and used these ideas to frame their portraits.
In the afternoon we looked at some cartoons on giftedness and had a discussion around what it is like being a Pakiki Kid, and how this affects relationships with colleagues, how being identified as a gifted learner affects their experiences in mainstream class. There were some interesting insights, and this seemed a valuable discussion for children to reflect on their learning relationships, and to hear from others who had both similar and different relationships. Everybody in the class contributed to this discussion and we recorded our thoughts. Next week we will continue to explore our Pakiki-ness. We finished the day with some systems activities and chess, before clean-up and reflections.
Thanks crew, see most of you next week (safe travels William and Madeline!)
Cheers, Scott.
Kia ora from day 7
We had a visitor from Germany visit us today to present and discuss the differences between Germany and New Zealand life. This was very timely, as we had been noticing for some time that the Kaplan's Depth and Complexity tools have "relate across time" but do not have "relate across space" or something similar to help us focus on the importance that space and location make to the way people think and act. I put the challenge to the children to find some time to create an 'across space' icon. Top marks for Finn who was the first to come up with a design, without any further prompting I might add. Once I gave Finn's design a space on the wall, for us to consider, many other kids got involved - brilliant. This prompted Finn to improve how well he had drawn his idea! What a treat for a teacher eh?
We had begun our learning with some more questioning practice. First, we asked questions of our own talent/passion projects. Second, we asked any old crazy question that was bugging us and needed to be in the question log. Of course many students used this latter opportunity to present their particular brand of humour, laughing is very important at Pakiki. Luckily it is typical of gifted kids to indulge in a quirky sense of humour. We kept on our questioning theme - but this time with our Socratic, challenging kind of hat on, that I have begun to refer to as thinking like a lawyer. Here we look to challenge assumptions, clarify meaning and probe for reasons and evidence. Today, I started reading aloud a short novel, Frindle, to the students. This is the amusing story of a gifted kid in an American elementary school who invents an alternative word for 'pen' and watches its meaning catch hold. We used this as a springboard to practice our Socratic approach - questioning, probing and challenge some of the ideas and actions of the characters.
Following morning tea we engaged in a fluent day with students doing different things, mostly around talent/passion time and portrait work. Several children have now completed their portraits - Connor, Matthew, Aaron, Jake, Madeline, William, and Casper, well done! I'm sure everyone has a better appreciation for the usefulness of adding maths to their art pieces. Over the next two weeks this unit will usher in the beginning of students discussing what being a pakiki kid means to them. This exploration of understanding what "giftedness" means to each of us will continue throughout the year.
Animators invested their talent time in an exploration of stykz - a computer animation program using stick people. I downloaded many extra characters, backgrounds, etc. for them and this was an opportunity to discover what was there, and become familiar with the software. There were some humorous results, though mostly in a tragic sense. This is a distinct pattern I have noticed with children's ( dare I say it is mostly boys') stick animations. I'm not sure why there is this fascination for 'black comedy'. Next week they need to construct a storyboard which we will work on and then o.k for animating.William made a great looking side of his bridge today. He has spent time making his struts strong and today had to problem solve how he might successfully attach them. He has gone with a combination of tape and dual staple system at the moment (untested)- we look forward to seeing the tension and compression it can handle. Jake worked on his battle of Arnhem study. This time he started working on thinking about it and gathering evidence from the German perspective. Next week I want him to consider the ethics of the operation (Market Garden) and its wider consequences. Madeline wrote a poem and gathered some riddles for her 'school journal'. Next week she is going to write a short story. I have challenged her to use Raymond Huber's trick of limiting the pages ( 1o r 2, I say) and starting with the end then writing her way to it. Katy and Annie researched what percentage of their population they needed to cover in their survey. Their excursions last lunchtime had given them 20 names. They figured their full potential market was about 50 children at NEVNS ( I think they have neglected a further potential market in the junior block), and they found to have a survey that had an error rate of 5% they needed to get to 44% of their population. So, they surveyed 2 more and set about working on graphing their results. Their conclusion appears to be their is a healthy demand for friendship bracelets in the NEVNS/Pakiki senior school community. They have also worked out a price point. They finished the day with a company name, a logo, and a motto, and had researched the qualities of a strong advertisement that they have just started creating. Lauren and Amy, who had continued their Shakespeare research team work with a visit to the library out of school, collected some of their facts using a "puppet pals" program on the ipad. While the characters didn't match (it has a cowboy theme) Lauren and Amy managed to voice over interesting and useful factual information about Shakespeare, including giving a dramatic element and making good use of humour(very important to a Shakespeare study). All in all a pretty solid talent time session.
In the afternoon, we had a mixture of portrait completion, chess and reflections. Well done all! Oh, we forgot to check the brainteaser results! - I will save them for next week.
Ciao, see you all next week, Scott.
Kia ora from day 6
Today, thanks to the United States' approach to displaying the calendar date, is world pi day! So, we started off with some pi exploration. We quickly figured out our relative expertise in the subject via a line up and then set to two different tasks relative to our skill level. William (who was today's pi master), Nathan, Christopher, Finn and Connor worked on an interactive site that challenged them to find the area, radius and diameter of varying sized circles (actually a circular paddock inhabited by a hungry goat). William was able to manage this solo and needed virtually no assistance (in fact he proved to be more of an assistor, if such a word exists). Nathan and Christopher demonstrated a steely determination to figure this out, once I had showed them how and became much more fluent in their efforts. Finn and Connor were on the cusp of getting it and I'm sure with a little more time would have coped admirably.
The rest of the class grabbed string, a pencil, a calculator and a piece of paper and began recording the circumference and diameter of circular items in the class. They then had to divide - you guessed it- the circumference by the diameter and record what they got. Some of them (Aidhan for one) got some extremely accurate measurements - especially of the class clock. We ended this session with a quick discussion of pi's origins, its irrationality and transcendental nature and the reasons we were unable to get it exactly in our explorations.
After this mental edge warm up we went straight to talent/passion time. Matthew and Connor decided on their element to study (they chose magnesium and actinium). This research seemed to fascinate them - they worked through playtime on it, were planning on working through lunch and, Matthew particularly, was ready to go back to it at the expense of anything else all day - hard to complain about that really isn't it? William constructed plans of his bridges, gathered resources and constructed 4 of the strongest paper poles I have seen at Pakiki. Amy and Lauren found information on Shakespeare including his family tree and a categorised list of his plays. I have suggested next week they try the many books I found at the library to fill in the gaps in their Shakespeare journal. Katy and Annie read about and created a market survey for their friendship bracelet business. They made a sample product to show people during the survey. They have conducted their survey in the class and included one student from the wider North East Valley school community. Next week they need to canvas their market further. Jake found out and wrote up some useful information on the Battle of Arnhem Bridge and its contextual relationship to the wider Operation Market Garden. His next step is to focus on the details of the battle itself and to try and find some interview footage to embellish his research. Madeline invested this time working on her portrait (which is very well done) and worked on her journal after play instead. Finn, Aaron, Frances, Casper and Christopher continued on with their flipbooks - these are basically complete now - well done. Finn and Christopher created a fish swimming scene and this workd very well - Finn's fish moves eloquently in and out of seaweed and his animation is pretty much seamless. Aaron created a waving man, Frances ahs a bee being gobbled up by a bird, and Casper showed a bullet being fired and crashing into a wall. All of the animators have the idea that simplicity = more realistic motion. It will be interesting to see how they adapt this idea into their computer animation program next week. Aidhan completed a large number of shots on his stop motion animation. He has used a plain backdrop and has thought through ways he can use a green screen to overcome some of the limitations of using lego - excellent thinking flexibly and thinking ahead Aidhan.
After play we swapped to portraits and poetry. Everyone is at different stages with this work and so there was a lot of individualised guidance. Because passion/time is now well underway this means that students who are waiting for me often get 'bonus' time during this session to continue with their passion projects. While this can make progress on the self-portraits and poetry a little slower, it does demonstrate that many of the students are striving for accuracy, are not content with mediocrity, and still can make efficient use of their time (by going on with talent projects). Some of the self-portraits have reached painting stage. Connor, William, Aaron, Jake and Casper all got to begin painting today, first underpainting in white, then layering on progressively darker shades in light of what their black and white photo dictated. There were some solid results and I am very keen to see how these will turn out on completion. Frances and Lauren worked hard on accurate proportions and showed a keen willingness to revise work that wasn't just so (as Madeline had earlier in the day). Katy also reworked some of her drawing (which is very accurate) and Matthew revised his shoulders and worked hard on making his hair accurate (his is looking quite like his photo as well), and Nathan's is also very accurate and ready to paint next week. Christopher completed his I am from poem (he had even worked on it during play) and managed to publish on his issuu.com site, well done - he now has 2 publications on this.
After lunch we turned to exploring chaotic systems and fractals. First we watched a YouTube clip, pausing to discuss interesting ideas, especially the butterfly effect. Nathan, Aaron, William, Finn, Madeline, Aidhan, and Annie all showed an interest and expressed their ideas regularly around this topic. We followed this up by exploring fractals on the computer (I had loaded a website fractal generator for the students to explore). There was some keen interest in this - notably Frances, Matthew, and William of the first group on the computers. I will need to talk to Nathan, Casper, and Finn re what they made of fractals next week - or feel free to wiki me!
Have to go - an interesting meeting at Concord school on another gifted programme awaits me.
Cheers all, see you next week! Scott.
7 March
Kia ora from day 5, A few kids away again today with a sports leadership day on at the Edgar stadium. Nonetheless, the rest of us had a productive morning. We started with a maths challenge - getting to 42 without using the digits 4 or 2. These kind of challenges are easy to provide differentiation to the students. Those for whom maths is not a strength are able to challenge themselves and those who find it easy can easily be pushed into more difficult equations by suggesting the use of BEDMAS, exponents and so on. It was great to see William rising to this challenge this morning. We turned from maths to Socrates and his questioning method for the rest of our mental edge learning this morning. We looked briefly at the context of Socrates' work and then looked over a series of Socratic questions I had prepared for the students. Today's questions all focussed on conceptual clarification and clarifying meaning; e.g. what is the nature of..? what exactly does this mean? Can you give an example? We read a Greek folktale and used our questions to try and find questions to explore more deeply what was going on. Casper and William were particularly astute at this today, and the overall questioning standard rose quickly across the course of the session.
We moved from mental edge to affective domain. At the moment we are involved in two affective domain units - poetry and art. The students were able to choose which one they would go on with today. The class has a laminated sheet, with the products that need completed this term, posted on the wall. Being allowed to choose when they invest their time as they attempt to complete their products is a good opportunity to allow choice in the classroom, to differentiate according to interests and also encourages development of managing oneself - both a habit of mind for us, and a key competency in the national curriculum. The striving for accuracy in the portrait work is fantastic. Casper has done such a fine job of measuring out his proportions that his self-portrait has a good likeness, as did Aaron and William. Amy took on board the 'Leonardo' approach and is making excellent progress, Matthew fine tuned his mouth and eyes and improved his portrait immensely. Jake and Connor have all also done very well, with completely different styles. They have got themselves to the stage where they have started exploring painting techniques - underpainting and shadowing, in preparation for painting their images.
At the same time, Lauren, Christopher and Finn worked on their poetry. FInn persevered trying to find a fitting last line, Lauren brainstormed ideas and Christopher started developing last week's brainstorm. He managed to draft a simplistic draft of his poem and has now developed this further with a great deal more poetic style.
After morning tea we turned to talent time. Connor and Matthew took to finding out about atoms, found out plenty of information then conducted a short experiment showing how sugar atoms fit in the spaces between water molecules. Finn, Christopher, Casper, Aaron and Frances beavered away at animated flip books. They have learnt that they must think where they put their subject, the importance of keeping the subject the same size, and the need to be very careful in the amount of movement they include with each frame. William found out a lot about truss bridges including some differences and similaritles about the different varieties. Amy and Lauren investigated some facts around Shakespeare's life and created a clever study aid to help with the final presentation of their work. Aidhan made excellent progress constructing and beginning to take photos for his lego-robot stop motion animation.
After lunch our sports leaders returned in time to join us for a discussion of complex and chaotic systems. We explored the traffic system, unpacked its components, and figured out how as a complex system, it was both unknowable fully (we blamed the input of people) but reasonable predictable ( as all of us who have tried to get a park outsied school at 3 p.m know). We finished with a chess session - the different groups investigated en passant and the touch piece play it rule.
Thanks for a great days effort team,
See you all next week, Scott.
29 February Hi and welcome to day 4. A quiet day for student numbers with 8 children away (many are on camp) meant a great time to get talent conferencing completed - lots of one-on-one time. Today the scientists started their atom discovery. Matthew and Connor found out about nucleus, protons and electrons (well, to be fair Connor already knew a bit) how they relate to elements and what kind of charges they carry. They are currently trying to find out what it means if an atom has a neutral charge. Connor knows that atomic charges have something to do with electricity but is not sure why that means our hair stands on end. A good start scientists! The animators were shown how to create a flipbook; we stressed the importance of thinking mathematically, as well as artistically, so that the movement is not too jumpy; and of being pedantic about detail and accuracy in both your subjects and your background. Many of the students drafted and reflected on a first flipbook. They all noticed areas for improvement in the way they had thought through their first go; Finn realised he had to shift the positioning of his character; Christopher decided next time his character needed to move a little more - great metacognition. Others, like Amy and Frances, decided to develop their character and use the scaling technique to reduce it to a size suitable for their flipbook. Jake conferenced with me and designed a history research project on the World War Two Battle of Arnhem. His project will go beyond details and facts and consider the story from different perspectives and consider ethical implications.
This talent time was held across the day with different groups working with me and on their projects at different times. Meanwhile, we were elaborating on the suggestion "what if students got to run the school. Jake, Frances and Matthew did a fine job of digging into a central idea, with Jake concluding that the human race would end after a sharp decline in education had us lose the ability to farm crops.
We spent the rest of the pre morning tea session working on our poems. Many of us read some "I am from" poems. These take the students a little while to see past the interesting language. Well done to Frances for her clever insights, and Matthew and Connor for their persistence. We recorded the patterns we noticed in the poems - that they all talked about people, places, family history, activities, possessions, food, culture and feelings that were significant in their lives. Amy got her poem published, Jake wrote a second draft of his which is only one shot away from completing, and several students brainstormed ideas ready for next week.
After morning tea wepractised our questioning skills by investigating the difference between open and closed questions, and introducing the idea of drip, puddle and lake questions that we first looked at last year. Today we had a student hide with a picture. The rest of the class asked questions that had only yes or no answers and tried to recreate the image that the volunteer (Connor)was looking at; we followed this by getting another volunteer (Aaron) with a different picture. This time the class could only ask open questions. When we reflected on the results we noticed that the second effort allowed us to get a view of the picture much quicker, though the closed questions did provide some advantages in getting specific detail. We spent the rest of the morning working on our talent time projects (see the first paragraph : )
After lunch we got conceptual with our systems study again. We talked more about abstract and real - the kids love this and came up with some interesting questions and queries, e.g. is the concept of abstract ideas itself an abstract idea? are hallucinations and illusions abstractions? We were discussing this to remind ourselves that the categories we might classify systems under are abstractions. We then took a couple of typical categories for systems - simple and complicated and set about classifying systems we could see around the school. We then reflected on our decision making and noticed that it wasn't as straightforward as we had first thought. Finn, and the two scientists - Connor and Matthew, noticed that even simple systems have complicated atomic structures : ) We finished our day with a quick chess lesson and practice.
Cheers for a fun days learning team, Scott.
22 February
Welcome from day 3!
Today we started with a warm up that aimed for flexibiity (a range of ideas) and originality. We had 5 and a half minutes to find unusual uses for hair clippings. Once the time was up the students were required to rank their ideas according to the most original. I think pom poms might have been the winner on this one, though Matthews highly organised approach to recording his ideas also needs mentioned. Once our brains were going we turned to fine tuning our questioning skills more. We watched a YouTube clip from whose line is it anyways where the contestants were playing the question game we had practised in pairs the week before. This time we had a go in teams with a theme - we tried 'going to the zoo'. The results were fun and required flexible and imaginative thinking - as Nathan cleverly pointed out in his reflection when asked to find a habit of mind he had used today. Stand-out performances were delivered by Annie, Aidhan (whose piano playing is coming on in leaps and bounds!) Nathan, Katy, Casper, William and Christopher.
We turned to our poetry after this. Several of us had published our mundane poems the week before (Maddie, Amy,Katy and Aaron) so these four moved onto the "Where I am from" poem. First, we brainstormed all the different ways you could 'be from' something - people, places, traditions, dreams, activities etc. We then read several I am from poems and highlighted language that appealed to us. Finally, we had a go at writing our own. The results were excellent - Madeline and Amy have their poems ready to publish in record time without skimping on quality, and Aaron and Katy have completed a first draft ready to expand next week. These four can all be commended on their poetry skill and focus. The others, many of whom also deserve commending (quality has its own pace) continued on with the editing of their first draft. Well done Connor for his persistence in getting his fan poem right; Casper wrote a fantastic personified rain poem; Christopher is publishing another great example of personification in his pen poem; Nathan has a crazy Dr. Seuss style poem that sounds like it could be a great rhyming picture book. Everyone can feel pleased with their approach to poetry so far - well done.
After morning tea we worked on our portraits. I had printed the black and white photos of ourselves and we first looked at a few of these and reminded ourselves what value meant as an art term (not the $ value). Several students remembered from the previous week - next week I am looking for 100%! We then took a seriously mathematical approach to measuring our facial proportions and drawing our portraits. It is hard to note a standout here because everyone was highly focused and attempting to improve their skills; but I have to mention Jake, who typified the artistic prowess and determination to strive for an accurate likeness that the whole class was demonstrating. During this time I was able to conference with a few children re their passion projects. Earlier the students who are doing talent groups this term had given me their decision about the group they wanted to be a part of. Yesterday I collected a large pile of relevant library books ready for projects to get underway in earnest and the students are rearing to go. Some of the individual passion project plans already show an improvement from last year in the student's thinking about goal setting and planning. I am looking forward to seeing these in action and the results.
We finished the middle session by being put into our chess groups who had a lesson on knight moves, stalemate and castling (depending on what group you were in) as well as some practise play. Thanks to Chris for doing lunch for us - I hope Finn managed to get you playing some chess : )
In the afternoon we looked at systems - we examined a definition; explored the difference between abstract and real (Finn was a great help here) and then had to decide on categories for a list of systems I had provided small groups with. We discovered how much categorising depended on perspective, or 'each of our different ideas about things' as Aaron put it; and how the similarities and differences between things often blurred the lines of categories. We finished with reflection time, focussing on habits of minds we had used, and had 5 minutes at the end for another round of the question game, which seems to be a big hit.
Phew big day!
p.s. we now have the new computers up and running (they are loading software updates behind me as I write!) BIG thanks to Brendan McCane for all his knowledge and assistance.
Cheers all - see you next week. (p.s. discussion points for those inspired are the difference between abstract and real; and the importance of perspective : )
Ciao for now,
Scott. oh...here's the day plan: Warm Up
unusual uses for hair clippings Mental Edge: Questioning
Ignorance Logging
The Question Game: Youtube Clip - what techniques are used? Affective Domain/Talent:
Playing with Poetry: Part 2 - edit your poems for publishing; where I am from poem reading Affective Domain/Talent TIme
Self-portraits - proportion and value: Part two printing photos and sketching YOU : ) examine your photo and start shading or making ‘notes’; conferencing talent projects Chess: Into Chess groups; lesson # 1 and play Systems: Lesson # 1 - what is a system; categorising systems Reflection Practice Clean Up (10 mins)
15 February
Howdy all from day two of the year. Here is today's dayplan.
Wednesday 15th February Warm UpWhat if plants grew limbs? Mental Edge:The Question Game Affective Domain/Talent:Playing with Poetry Affective Domain/TalentSelf-portraits - proportion and value Chess: Lesson; pre-assessment and play : ) Mental Edge/Affective Domain:Philosophy -”Responsibility” ReflectionClean Up (10 mins)
We started with a creative thinking exercise to warm up our brains. In this exercise students aim to create ideas fluently and to elaborate on their ideas. The skill is in providing reasons for their thoughts and trying to dig deeper into possible effects and consequences if each idea they think of were true. During this lesson we also discussed ideas about academic humility in e.g. avoiding talking in absolutes. We remembered (and were introduced) to Socrates' idea that the only thing we know for certain is that we know nothing for certain. Finn countered Socrates by saying he was certain the black shape on his Ferrari jacket was a horse.
We practised our questioning skills with a couple of rounds of the questioning game. Here participants try to respond to each other only with questions. This was challenging. At morning tea we all watched an entertaining clip of Whose Line is it Anyway where the comedians played this game.
We finished the morning session by working on poetry writing. It is awesome to see students who don't consider themesleves poetic to take up the challenge, show persistence and demonstrate their creativity. Our emphasis was on playing with words, both in actual use and choice of language and techniques as well as the way we laid our text on the page. We read and analysed some poems about mundane objects from well known poets and then played with writing about everyday objects in our class. We wrote about curtains, vacuum cleaners, sellotape, pens, pots, computers, water drops, fans, chess pieces and many more. Some students, like William, wrote several small poems, others like Amy wrote longer pieces. Some drafted easily and revised for perfection, some worked hard showing persistence and flexible thinking to drag their poems into existence but everyone got something going. We talked about writing as sculpting and the need to put a 'lump of clay' (words) on the paper and start crafting them. This lesson was the beginning of a larger poetry unit where we will craft poems about ourselves and our background.
In the middle session we began exploring value and proportion in art. We looked at black and white photos and talked about the value and contrast; we examined some of Da Vinci's notebook drawings on proportion and talked a lot about mapping the face and focusing carefully on the shape of facial features. We practiced drawing in proportions, with students taking turn photographing themselves and loading this onto iphoto to be changed to black and white. Later we will use these photos to create portraits and paint them in black and white. We will complete the paintings by putting our own 'values' behind our portraits.
Before lunch we completed chess pre-assessments from the Otago Chess Club. The beginning players practised playing chess and today learnt about the role of the bishop.
After lunch we had a philosophy discussion about responsibility. We were investigating how we decide when someone is responsible for consequences. We examined a number of cases and considered how factors like age, education, the law and intention impact on whether we think someone is responsible for events. We notcied how complex these issues can be and concluded our discussion for the day with William's idea that many factors need to be considered in each case. To this Finn added the clause that perhaps that is why we have law as the final arbiter. The students were very capable of interesting and deep thinking and everybody contributed actively. We recorded our ideas, which I will photograph and put up on the blog and/or on people's issuu libraries soon.
At the end of the day we had our first solo reflection. The students made good progress in providing rationales for their reactions to today's learning experiences. Reflection practice aims for students to reflect both on their feelings and their thinking during the day.
A great day team - looking forward to eharing about passion project ideas and starting talent time next week!
Ka Kite, Mr. K
Welcome to a new year of Wednesday Pakiki. Today we were welcomed onto the school with a formal mihi whakatau in the library. Prior to that we had introduced ourselves and played a name game to get to know each other better. We also hastily learnt a waiata and practised our marae protocol to be ready for the mihi whakatau. The Pakiki students were fantastic and the N.E.V kids were very welcoming and showed us around the school. When we came back we got into a technology challenge - to build a pataka (storehouse) at least a metre in height out of newspaper, string and tape. We had 30 minutes. Most everyone worked well together and there was some success and innovation on display. Students were rewarded with Pakiki dollars (our reward system this year). These dollars will later be 'invested' on the stock exchange during our study of the monetary system.
Much of the rest of the day was spent profiling - gathering information about our learning styles, pre-assessing our knowledge of mental edge activities and our understanding of what a system is We also found time to play (and for some, begin to learn) chess and to practise our reflection writing. We also investigated issu.com - a site where students will be able to collect their year's work in a personal electronic 'library'.
It was a successful first day with a great group of students. I am looking forward to next week. Here is the day's plan, which I will post each week, and some photos from today. Cheers!
Wednesday 8th February 280 minutes Morning = 115 min Warm Up/Ice Breaker:
Circular introductions using duck or ball.
World’s fastest Marae Protocol lesson
Name Tag/Name Roulette Talent: Singing waiata - E Tu Kahikatea Mihi Whakatau Mental Edge: Technology Challenge - Te Hanga Potaka Middle = 90 minutes Finish tech challenge Talent
Overview and Profiling
Renzulli: Profiling Mental Edge: Pre-Assessment Chess: Lesson - and play : ) Afternoon = 75 minutes Systems: pre-assessment
Monitoring Sheets
What is a System??!!
Brainstorm and categorise systems Reflection Practice
sorry about the sporadic blogging at the moment - please see the student blogs which we have managed to write on a couple of days this term. The demands of reports and sharing night have slowed up the blogging but as we slowly return to normality I will try and throw a few comments out into cyberspace. Just a quick word today before I head to another meeting - today we spent some time studying deontology and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. This is part of our belief systems and is a natural progression from our discussions about utilitarianism (deontology is opposed to consequentialist arguments). If you get the chance you could continue the deontological vs consequentialist debate - is an action morally justified if it attends to a universal rule (here we used Kant's categorical imperative - only act if the action is something you would agree everyone could do) or is an action morally justified if it results in good consequences? As always when we do philosophy, I am excited at the way the students quickly hone in on key points of interest and debate that mirror the discussions I have studied over the years. Today they quickly recognised how the categorical imperative excludes lying, suicide, stealing and murder from moral actions - and of course many of these match most people's intuitions (which Kant wanted to do). Anyway - it wasn't all we did today but it would be a great thing to discuss and reinforce if you have the opportunity and/or inclination. Meeting time...
Cheers, Scott.
Kia ora from the first day of term 4.
We have a very busy term ahead of us (see the curriculum overview in the Pakiki newsletter for all the details). On top of our busy classroom schedule I am writing reports at the moment which means not a lot of time after school for things like the blog. So, I put my thinking cap on and have decided to get the students to write the blog as their end of day reflections. I have created a page for each class ( you can find it on the left pane). I hope you get a chance to read what we have been up to and engage with your children with some of the big ideas we are looking at this term. The belief systems unit has already created a lot of stimulating and thoughtful discussion and is a great one to talk about at home, given everyone has a perspective to share (a little less expertise needed than quantum physics as well : ). We will discuss philosophical, religious and political belief systems over the next few weeks, so hopefully there is something for everyone.
Cheers, Scott.
Kia ora from day 26
This morning started with the students writing out their timetables. Today’s brief included a deadline for having their term’s work collated, passion project, quantum concept and game systems. Of course, we also had chess and I worked with all the students reflecting on our Dabrowski/nadpodbudliwosc study. The key idea of this has been self-reflection - a concious analysis of our self as a learner and how we can use this analysis to improve our learning practices and patterns.
Luke spent the morning completing his double slit experiment keynote. He created the rest of his slides and I scaffolded him we to edit his project. His project now explains what an interference pattern is, what causes it and what is surprising about light creating one. William started on his excellent chess project adding arrows to show the fork moves and adding diagrams to some slides for greater clarity. He has prepared his project at an excellent level for many of us at Pakiki (myself included). He also worked with Nathan to create a series of questions for their quantum board-game. This process was an excellent insight in to the knowledge and understanding the two had gathered on quantum physics. Finn worked on a hilarious and informative Schrodinger’s Cat keynote; Madeline organised her folder; Aaron wrote the next segment of his story; Lauren brainstormed and categorised information for her fairy- tale board game as well as did some excellent research on her ballet project. Lauren and I invested some time discussing the role of sources in building an argument. Casper collated his evolution passion project and worked in his group on the board game characters. Matthew completed a fantastic stykz animation explaining entanglement; he also worked with Connor on their digital story. Aidhan worked on his board game characters and rules. Annie and Katy have begun another boardgame about a zoo visit and Madeline wrote a critique of their first one. I made the team pitch their new project to me before proceeding with resources and their new game sounds like it has potential to be a sound improvement over their first.
We started the afternoon filling out the final part of our KWL on quantum physics. Then we turned back to our own timetables.
This afternoon most of us invested time in our term review. It was becoming obvious many of us had a bit of a gap around Einstein's theory of special relativity (surprise, surprise : ) especially with regard to space/length (from what I have researched about it length contracts and time dilates ... we were pretty onto the time thing but not so good on space - any parents want to pitch in on this please do : ) ...so, anyway we reviewed the clips around classical and special relativity. It was great to see how interested the students were to review these ideas.
Cheers all - an enjoyable learning day.
Kia ora - day 25
Today we started with a creative thinking warm-up - think of 10 different uses for a pumpkin. There were a number of original ideas, my favourite was a footstool for a panda : ) We then did a brief affective domain lesson inspired by the self-reflection required in Dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration. Today we were reflecting on identifying learning activities we are able to sustain focus at for a long period of time, and learning activities that we need to do in short, sharp bursts. The students listed some activities for themselves in each category. Then they constructed a timetable for the day, taking on board what they had just reflected on. Exactly what they had to today was given by me, and the learning priorities were outlined BUT the students were able to decide when they did what and how they broke their day up. This proved successful for most of the students - some divided their activities up, others did large blocks of one thing then switched. The rest of the morning was spent with a variety of passion projects, quantum concepts and some game reflections going on. HIghlights were Christopher's "meaning of art" writing, Madeline and my discussion about entanglement (it drew in Nathan and WIlliam too); the next stage of Aaron's political revenge saga; Annie's increased pace in her llama study and William's joy at analysing Kasparov's chess expertise, Finn's comparison of Age of Empire's version of the siege of Malta with the real thing.
This continued until John arrived for chess. We first reflected on the difficulties in teaching chess and then decided which things were most important to teach first - objectives, checkmate, check, positions and movement. There was a major upset when Nathan defeated William at chess challenges following our lessons. I am sure someone of William's skill will bounce back quickly - watch out next week Nathan : )
After lunch we had a visitor, Jason, come and talk to us about distributed computing. This is the research model where you send small parts of a very big problem out to multiple computers instead of requiring one super computer to do the job for you. Jason showed us the Boinc site which acts as a central point for researchers to locate their work and some of the sites- Einstein at home (looking for planets and solar systems, SETI (looking for extra terrestrials) and other sites exploring solutions to all kinds of major problems. Thanks very much for an informative and interesting visit!
Cheers team, see you next week.
Kia ora from Buddy Day
A fun filled day with most of the bringing buddies from their normal school so they could experience a Pakiki Day. Thanks to all the buddies who joined in today. We started with some creative thinking tasks to warm up our minds - we modified Cluedo to give it a N.Z theme and created a computer game character from some random shapes. We also had a great visit from a civil engineer talking about how he got into the profession, what engineers do and how bridges work. Here's a quick visual diary outlining our Wednesday learning. Cheers!
Kia ora - Day 23
Today most of the morning was a games session. The students were given the option of investing their time on their talent projects or on their game design. Madeline chose to work on her passion project while the other members of her game group - Lauren, Annie and Katy worked on their YouTube game ( a game about some of the topical clips most children seem to be keen on at the moment). Madeline is creating an expose of Wednesday Pakiki for her passion project. If all goes well she may have made a small advertisement for us! Connor and Matthew also split their time and labour between working on their digital story (passion project) and their board game. Their game involves gathering gold and troops to take over a castle. You roll dice then move either diagonally, horizontally or vertically trying to land on a square that gives you the equipment you need. Whoever takes over the castle wins.The rest of the class decided to work on game design - it seems highly motivating for them. There was some very good progress today with all the teams reaching a point where they could test their prototypes. WIlliam and Luke had a short round of their Middle Ages quiz/battle game; Christopher and Jake played a round of their Worlds at War - a turn based dice game that involves trying to accumulate weapons to challenge your opponent. Casper, Nathan and Aidhan have made another military turns based game called "Heroes of War". You collect resources and build up your arsenal in order to defeat your opponents. Notice a pattern here? : )
After morning tea we reflected on our our morning achievements and plotted the next step for our game. For many of us the next step is writing instructions. This will have us ready to test our games on our buddies the following week. We then brainstormed some product options for our quantum investigations and moved into chess. Today John's lesson was about the kings gambit opening. This is an adventurous opening that sets the game rolling quickly but white needs to be a little careful to avoid an early checkmate.
After lunch we started investigating various areas of quantum thinking. There were quite a few students away on a "Mathalon" but the rest of us dug into working out Schrodinger's cat, many worlds theories, entanglement and why, if atoms are mostly space, can't we e.g. walk through walls. Matthew created a neat stykz animation showing entanglement, Katy and Annie started creating a model of Schrodinger's cat thought experiment, Christopher and Jake are creating a keynote on the same experiment, Lauren is investigating atoms, space and solidity, while Casper and Aidhan were working on the idea of multiple universes. Some good thinking team - I really like the way many of you persisted at grasping some difficult and slightly crazy concepts.
Cheers, Scott.
Kia ora from Day 22 (day 21 was with the reliever)
Today we started with a creative thinking activity - the students had to think of a use for exploding nails and sell their product. There was a wide range of idea (though many of the boys went for destroying applications : ) . Christopher and Luke are selling their nails as an alternative to dynamite for moving rock to discover expensive jewels and minerals; Katy and Annie's nails are used to drive off and infuriate older brothers; William and Casper's are a new portable hunting device; Matthew, Connor and Jake all came up with military applications; Madeline and Lauren's nails were to instantly turn fruit inot juice - like a portable blender; and Nathan and Aidhan's nails were exploding art paint bombs. Great ideas team.
We moved into a free flow session where some children were working on passion projects while others and others were on game design. They swapped over after play. This morning I worked with Connor and Matthew. They have been working on a joint project compiling information about super volcanoes, the huge volcano on Mars, and writing a short story about Mars' volcano. They are planning on publishing their fiction as a digital story. Today we edited their finished story and they started gathering appropriate photos for their digital publishing. Annie has been creating a blog about llamas and alpacas. This has meant learning skills how to create and use a wiki as well as researching her subject. Today I looked over her work and we reviewed her plan noticing the need to include questions that strive for depth and complexity. This is her challenge going forward. Finn took a look at Age of Empires 3 which he is reviewing for its historical accuracy. He has examined the start of the single campaign which begins with the Great Siege of Malta by the Ottoman Empire. He found out that this actually took place in the mid 16th century. The characters in the game's story line are not accurate however the order of knights, weapons and techniques they use are - right down to particular fencing schools and sword moves of the time. Next week Finn will look at a real life character from the siege as an alternative person the game makers might have used to increase their accuracy. Other students' passion progress included Christopher completing some birds-eye 3-d art, Aaron achieving another half page of his assassination tale, Katy getting her architecture study ready for presentation, Lauren collating her Shakespeare study, Madeline taking photos and adding parts to her keynote about Pakiki. Nathan, Casper and Aidhan were busy on their board game all morning. Their game is a cross between a role-playing and board game. The object is to stay alive in the face of starvation, of others competing for resources, natural disasters and the like. It is great to see econ-island wasn't lost on them : ) I hope they can remember the economic concepts as well!
Immediately after play we went headlong into game design with groups brainstorming contexts, creating boards and cards and so on. The motivation is intense! Sitting back listening and observing the groups at work I can hear students sharing and critiquing ideas, establishing a dynamic division of labour, problem solving challenges, encouraging and judging their work as they go. It really is impressive and apart from getting things going and being around to bounce ideas with students I am almost redundant during this phase! The only reason students were catching up with me was to report excitedly on what their games are about and the progress they are making. I wonder if my assistance will be more in demand once we start writing instructions.
At chess today we learnt a new piece of chess jargon - zugzwang. This German word refers to when a player whose turn it is to move who has no move that does not worsen his position. Such a player is said to be in zugzwang.
After lunch we turned to our quantum study. Today we did the double slit experiment with light. We used a laser held in a vice, a piece of glass that had a blackened area (we used a candle to make this) and we scratched fine double slits into the soot using a paper clip. WE shot the laser through the slits onto the white board and viola - an interference pattern. We revisited our understanding of why waves interfere with each other to create this pattern and we wrote up our experiment on computers. This experiment was a lot of fun and was very successful.
Cheers team, Scott.
Today is day 20
This morning we started with a creative thinking exercies "what if". We aimed for fluency - this meant as many ideas as we could. Matthew and Nathan thought you could make a city in the clouds if clouds had string tied to them (they imagined tying houses to the string). Katy continued her moustache theory of braininess - what if a scientist shaved his moustache - would he lose his smarticle particles? (finding humour anyone?) Connor thought there would be sky clocks if there strings hanging from the cloud - then everyone could tell the time at anytime. Luke made up his own what if... you were lighter than a feather. Wednesday's score was 5.7 ideas per student on average. They just beat Tuesday. After this we played and analysed games for a second time. AIdhan, Nathan, Katy, Annie all started creating their game. Nathan and AIdhan's is a turn based board role-playing game. Annie and Katy's is a board game kind of like snakes and ladders. These prototypes will be tested and improved during the term. Aaron, Luke and WIlliam played monopoly and they enjoyed it so much that WIlliam even scored it higher than chess! Matthew and Connor played mastermind. Connor liked how the game had a code you had to break using stratgey. Jake and Chris played Kogworks and didn't enjoy it becuase there wasn't enough activity ( i"m not sure they fully got the rules correct). Lauren and Madeline played battleship and they realised there was quite a bit of player control using logic to figure out where the boats were.
We then moved onto talent time. Madeline planned a project we're she investigates Pakiki kids and makes a movie explaining this on imovie. Lauren finished her Shakespeare sonnet! Fantastic. Annie found out how to upload photos on her Llama wiki. Aidhan and Nathan have merged their game analysis with their new passion project - good thinking. Jake designed ideal tanks according to his criteria, Aaron wrote more of his story - the assassination has nearly taken place, Connor started his keynote on the stages of a super volcano eruption; William found out about Legal's checkmate; Matthew wrote more of his volcano story; Luke found out some of the new materials and engines some new vehicles are using; Finn looked at the Mayflower's arrival to North America and is looking at the Spanish next week; Christopher added a rugby theme to his Otago art portfolio and Katy worked on drafting the north side of her house.
After play we looked at Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration. In a simplified version this espouses the idea of being reflective in order to identify the positive and negative conditions that occur internally and externally and which have an impact on one's learning. Today we reviewed the idea of being a reflective learner and discussed what internal conditions might affect each of us. Each student then recorded some ideas about their own internal conditions. John arrived for 40 minutes of chess before lunch. William and I were entangled in a tight battle which time stalled, William having a slight advantage when time was up.
After lunch we conducted an experiment to see how classical localised particles behave in a 'double slit' situation. This involved examining what happens to sand as it falls from a paper cup with two small slits cut into the bottom. The idea is to show that particles in the classical (non-quantum) world act as we expect them to, in this case forming a typical pattern of two piles. In our next steps we will try and observe how waves act when they interact and to see how a laser light acts when put through a double slit.
Cheers team,
Scott.
Welcome to term 3 day 2 (#19)
This morning we started with an interesting discussion from Dr. Scharpf on science's role as a predictor of what is going to happen. In doing so he was able to describe the shift from classical relativity to einstein's version of relativity and to introduce the shift to thinking about the world in a quantum way. We also got to hear about a hypothesis (from the Greek word "to suppose") and theory (from the Greek "to speculate"). This is the third time I had heard Dr. Scharpf's talk but I was still engrossed in every word (except when I had to leave for a few minutes :( and found more questions springing into my head than I possibly had the time to ask him. I hope there were similar feelings for many of the students and judging form the way they approached the next task we did I think their interest was indeed heightened. When Dr. Scharpf left we watched a quick national geographic clip about muons and research into how we can make these strange, tiny, heavy electron type entities travel almost at the speed of light and bring them forward in time (in a sense) by making them "live" longer than they normally would. The students then got to play with their creative side and imagine what else might be. I was wrapped to see so many of them focus their ideas on light speed, the atomic and subatomic world and start to play with some of the language we had been exploring through last weeks learning, Dr. Scharpf's discussion and our video clips.
We switched to talent time with an emphasis on being reflective about our learning. Some students make better progress on these projects than others and I am stressing we recognise and verbalise the problems we face and the strategies we have tried. Then we need to ask were those strategies successful? If they weren't did we try something new? Today's talent had William dig deeper into the scholar's checkmate and find strategies to counter it and defeat your opponent; Finn found out about Christopher Columbus and is challenging himself to keep his overall question in mind as he researches the details (to help him decide what to ignore and what to grab); Casper explained the evolution of one of his characters form a sea to a land animal and we talked about the evolutionary process, Lauren struggled on to write a couple more lines of her sonnet - she is getting there!, Katy contacted someone from the engineering association to talk with her about bridges and investigated a stunning bridge design - the Helix Bridge. She is practising her paraphrasing and made some very good progress today - well done Katy, keep at it because it is an important skill to have : ) Christopher fine tuned his art plan to focus on an Otago theme and continued creating his first piece, Connor drafted the process that leads to a super volcano explosion and Matthew wrote the next part of his science fiction story.
We took another look at Dabrowski and his ideas of nadpodbudliwosc and today the students completed a stock-take of their own super-sensitivities. John arrived for a lesson on the importance of the centre squares in chess openings and challenged the children to think about what and why the moves being made a good or not. The students played a combined game against John and he helped them analysed each move and consider their options.
Kia ora from Day 18, the first day of a new term!
This morning we got straight to it and after brief hello's were into our talent projects. I had some new talent ideas and projects put in place for students who were wondering where to go next and we had quite a few take up the idea of digital storytelling - some were integrating the idea into their existing projects - should make for some fun and interesting products. I worked with Finn on developing a new history project. He is researching the exploration and initial colonisation of the Americas. We found some great books to help us on the Pakiki shelves and he has already constructed a timeline. Next week he will decide on two or three key characters, and several key events to go into further depth on. Finally, when he has collated and presented his information he will be able to play and review Age of Empires 3 ( a video game about the conquest of the Americas by Europeans). This will allow him to practice his critical thinking skills, to practice developing criteria for judgement and dovetails into our systems study on games. Of course, the idea that he could play a video game about historical events also has him very keen - now the challenge is to harness that motivation and come up with a good research study prior to the review : )
At the same time as this was going on some of the students were playing and analysing board games we have in the classroom. Over the next two terms students will have analysed games, then created games of their own. I have created guide sheets to help their analysis based on gaming principles. If anyone has games they are willing to share, or knows anyone that is part of a gaming club please let us know : )
While the gaming study carries over the next two terms the main systems focus for this term is quantum physics. Today we started with Einstein's theory of relativity (this is not quantum physics but is an important preceding idea to the development of quantum ideas). We watched a great animated video I found that unpacks Einstein's central ideas. We stopped the video frequently to talk over what we were seeing and hearing, as it wasn't always straight forward. The students were well engaged and even the non-scientifically motivated amongst us seemed interested and had plenty of questions - it is hard not to have some wow moments when you start talking about how time and space change depending on how fast we are going, and how incredibly wacky things get once we get to the speed of light (according to Einstein). At the end of the 15 min video we conducted our own experiment with chocolate to see if we could measure the speed of light. We took a bar of chocolate and placed it in a microwave with the turning device removed. This allowed the microwaves to travel through the chocolate unevenly, giving us several defined 'hotspots'. We then measured the space between the hotspots. This told us half the length of a microwave. We knew the frequency of the waves - 2450 megahertz (2,450,000,000 waves per second, I believe). Now, all we had to do was multiply the frequency by the length (our number - 6.3 cm x 2) and we would have the speed of the microwave. Given that microwaves are a form of light we were hoping to find the speed of light - we ended up about 8 million metres/ sec out - not too bad out of 300 odd million. We figured our measurement would have been slightly out. William showed exceptional striving for accuracy, refusing to give up and using a trial and error approach to discover what our measurement should have been - he got it eventually, requiring 7-8 decimal places. We finished our experiment by eating the chocolate, of course : )
John arrived for chess and we learnt how to notate our games. This has the benefit of being able to learn from chess books and being able to analyse our games for mistakes or alternatives.
After lunch we organised our work from the previous term (we normally do this on the last day of term but with open day in the last week we never got to that). Finally, we used our creativity to make some creative pictures out of squiggles on a page. We then rated our originality - Wednesday got 13 - well done!
Great to see you all again,
Scott.
Kia ora from Day 16
Today was an intense day of economics. We completed two Econ Island lessons so that we could get into the simulation proper. First thing this morning, having checked our shares, we auctioned the plots of land on Econ Island. The bidding was fierce, especially for the stone quarries. Several astute bidders, like Madeline and William, waited until people were short on money and then swooped up some bargains. This was a lengthly process but it sets us up for the rest of the unit and was a lot of fun.
Once the auction was finished we worked on talent time. Several new passion projects are being designed. Casper is creating a new civilization; Matthew and Connor are investigating volcanoes; Katie has been drawing scale designs of bridges and is not unpacking their key features, today she looked at how arch and suspension bridges work; Annie found some excellent resources for her Llama study; Aaron is starting a writing journal including poetry and short stories.
After interval we set about finishing our critical reviews. Many students are publishing final drafts, several students have finished completely. This work shows that most of them can now put an argument together using evidence to support their claims and understand the importance of representation in a text. As students were finishing this work they moved onto Chess, although sadly John was unable to come today. Finn showed excellent attention to defending his pieces in his game.
After lunch we moved into the second Econ Island lesson. The key new learning today was the concept of opportunity cost. At this point decisions students make stay with them for the remainder of the simulation - for better or for worse. The aim from here on in is to compete to earn the most money but at the same time to increase the standard of living as an island as a whole. It was notable that students were both being competitive and cooperative in their economic dealings with each other. Nonetheless, as is to be expected in a fledging economy such as ours the standard of living was not high - in fact it was in the negatives. Finally, each student wrote about which style of economy they want their island to adopt and why.
Well done team, look forward to more learning next week.
Scott
Kia ora from Day 15
This morning we were all excited making our pin hole reflectors so we could watch the transit of Venus. After a bit of trial and error and some fine help from Glenn we were up and running and could see the tiny dot move across our reflected sun. Finn, Aaron and Connor were particularly interested in our astronomy. We intermixed this with talent time this morning which worked well while a large number of us were missing, doing ICAS exams. Lauren brainstormed her sonnet ideas and found out the structure that a sonnet demands. Matthew and Connor started the tricky task of paraphrasing the notes they had gathered on Archimedes' war machines. Jake watched some discovery documentaries on tanks; Christopher wrote his reflection on his animation project; and Madeline began publishing her journal articles, poems and stories. onAfter morning tea we worked on our critical reviews. Some of these arguments are starting to take shape nicely and we'll have a few published for final edits by next week. John arrived for chess - today's lesson was about sacrificing pieces for greater advantage. There were several successful challenges today. William and I had a 1-1 battle, sadly (for me) he won the second game which means he has jumped to the top of the ladder - well done William you can read more about this game at the pakikichess wiki. There has been a definite improvement across the class in chess this year which is fantastic and a testimony to the expertise and enthusiasm John brings to our Pakiki day.
After lunch we moved onto Econ island. Today we were introduced to the island proper. At this stage of the game the students are battling for survival by trying to carefully maintain the scarce resources their island has. Sadly, many did not survive past the first round. WIth supplies so scarce prices were high and students were willing to pay whatever to try and secure their basic needs. We had time to play the second lesson with the game board. The students proved themselves to be fast learners and overcompensated in the second lesson, harvesting too little to keep everyone fed and warm. They did notice that a way around the problems they were facing, in our purely free market island scenario, was to introduce some government regulation - this will happen a little later.
Well done team,
see you all next week.
Scott.
Hi from Day 14
This morning we checked our share portfolio performances then invested 20 minutes discussing some of the ideas and knowledge I gained at Tuesday’s visit to the Forsyth Barr offices ( we go in late June : ) The students quickly came up with creative ideas to change how we work on the sharemarket at Pakiki, including creating their own companies and having a mini stock exchange open for a few minutes in the morning.
We switched to critical literacy and played text detectives sleuthing for evidence to support our arguments about Granny O’Grimm’s representation and how this helps convey the author’s message. This was clearly new learning for many of our students who are continuing to develop their skills and understanding of what gathering evidence to support an argument. Nonetheless, we made some progress and will continue to hone our critical literacy skills next week.
Before morning tea we found some time to engage with our talent time. A number of students have completed their projects and our now at the stage where they need to review their work. Thinking metacognitively is a crucial part of the Pakiki experience but not necessarily the most enjoable for all of us. There is often the temptation to just get on with the next project. While this energy is admorable, reflecting on one’s work helps us improve our future studies.
We split our time after morning tea between talent, chess and a community of inquiry. Today’s community of inquiry looked at another aspect of Renzulli’s theory of giftedness. Today we explored whether giftedness was something we were born with or something we develop through our environment. Here are the notes from our discussion:
Madeline agrees with Dr. Renzulli. She thinks that you can’t just be born with intelligence it is more that you grow up in a certain environment e.g. if you had scientists and/or artists as parent there is a good chance you would be creative because you would be exposed to this kind of thinking. Lauren kind of agrees and disagrees because you might be born with some kind of gift but you could also learn or develop a gift (even a different one to the one you were born with). Jake thinks that you can be born with intelligence inherited from the intelligence e.g. of your parents but you can also develop it. You don’t have to be born with it to have a gift developed though. Casper thinks that you can be born with the ability to learn a particular thing - that doesn’t mean you are gifted it just means you have potential but if you weren’t born with that potential you still could become good at it, e.g. if you want too but you will probably have to try harder than the person born with the gift. Aidhan agrees with Lauren, Jake and Casper that you might be born with potential but you still have to work at it. Luke agrees with this view as well. Maddie adds there is always room for improvement. Annie thinks that intelligence has to be developed rather than something that you born with it. She argues, from personal experience, that her family all read a lot and this is where her talent and love for reading comes from - she was given the chance to develop it through her environment and not her genetic make-up. Katy thinks that everyone has a gift that they are born with it but it needs the right environment for you to “discover” it. Connor thinks that you can be born with a gift but if you don’t have a passion for it you may never develop it; he also says you might develop gifts you are not born with as well. Matthew agrees with Connor because you don’t just do something once and be good at it, you have to like it and work at it to get better at it. William agrees more with Matthew and Connor - you can be born with a gift and you can develop things to be good at them but you if you are not born with it you won’t become gifted. Nathan thinks you can be born with something but you can use your ability to learn (= intelligence for Nathan) in order to get good at something you are not born with and then this becomes a “inherited gift” for future generations, hence nurture turns into nature. Amy is not sure because it is hard to decide what side to believe. Aaron thinks giftedness is not something that we are born with but develops out of our passions.
At chess today John explained to the students how to use pieces to support each other in the end game, and how to be careful using the queen in the early stages of a game.
After lunch we read Frindel, and briefly discussed the original of some words e.g. “welfare”. We finished our day with lesson 8 of Econ Island, today we explored a mixed market economy and the students experienced the joys of taxation, amidst much protest. However, many thought this was a fair way of doing things because it alleviated the problem of scarcity for those who missed out on resources. Others did argue that it was unfair and only encouraged laziness. I’m sure I’ve heard that argument before somewhere. Next we will be starting the Econ Island board game, I look forward to seeing how it goes.
Cheers for a good day,
Scott
Hi from Day 13
Today we had a new class member join - a big Pakiki welcome to Luke. Luke seemed to easily settle into the Pakiki Wednesday whanau and I look forward to learning with him throughout the rest of the year. We started the day quickly checking and calculating our shares - mostly bad news; hurray for Ryman and Trade Me both of whom are keeping student's portfolios looking not tooo worse for wear. We moved onto our community of inquiry about giftedness - today we discussed differences between school and creative giftedness (Renzulli argues that later is a better indicator and is more important). Here are the notes from our discussion:
Talent time followed. Matthew and Connor tried an experiment to move tinfoil attached to a paper clip with a charged balloon. They successfully moved the foil, wrote the experiment up and considered atomically what was making this happen. Amy and Lauren practiced their play and brainstormed their sonnet topic. A number of students are busy getting metacognitive and reviewing their passion projects - Katy and Annie reviewed their first passion project - the friendship bracelet business; Aaron and Finn reviewed their animation projects; William is reviewing his bridge building. Nathan continued to problem solve his game maker; Aidhan created an animation; Christopher remade his wonderful magician's animation (the file had become corrupted); Madeline wrote another piece for the journal - she decided all journals need a "how to" section and made hers "how to annoy a younger sibling" : ) Casper made a short stop motion animation and loaded it onto FramebyFrame. Luke wrote a list of things he loves to do at home and school so that we could see what might be an area of passion for him - there was an obvious link between a love for thinking about future transport and lego design, so we began planning a lego digitial design project that involves first conceptualising and sketching future transport ideas, then transferring his ideas into a digitial 3d model. Great start Luke!
After morning tea we watched an award winning short animation - Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty, a humorous movie that asks us to think about how society views the elderly. We used our critical literacy approach to discuss the representation of Granny and how this helps get the message across. Here are some brief notes we took:
Granny O’Grimm : Representation - Wednesday
“How does the authors’ representation of the characters help get the message across?”
The message is “don’t judge elderly people as useless or not worth inviting to things” (Lauren).
elderly fairy in the movie is the same as Granny O’Grimm so the viewer know’s that this is granny’s experience
She turns to the mirror when she is describing how it feels to be left out - show’s reflection of her feelings...she is talking to herself rather than actually reading the story (Maddie)
Her tone changes from soft to angry when she is talking about being left out - get’s the point across strongly
body language - hanging onto teddy and bedpost telling how sad the fairy feels - violin playing, granny is hesitant and has a far away expression
sarcastic
bitter
rudely mimics young - show the young people don’t care
Next week we will re-watch the film and add evidence from the text to support our claims, as part of a critical review of the film. The general feeling today was that the authors have done a good job of using representation to get their point across. The question will be can our Pakiki students use evidence and reasoned argument to get their point across in their reviews. Chess rounded out the morning session. William bravely took on John, our tutor and ended with a stalemate. Matthew played a thoughtful and careful game and Finn successfully challenged his way to third on the ladder. After lunch we managed to get two rounds of econ island in - which is great because Wednesday have now caught up with the other classes. Today we examined a command economy and a free market economy and compared them. The general preference was that the free market economy was more exciting and had more point to it (the lure of marshmallows, i.e. incentives, is stron on Wednesday : ), though one or two ( e.g.Aaron) thought that the command economy was fairer. Next week we will look at a mixed market economy, like NZ, and the students will be introduced to the joy of taxation : )
Cheers all see you next week!
Scott!
Kia ora from Day 12
A quick look at our nzx50 started this morning and some of the children were able to inform us about the happenings in Europe - Finn in particular seemed well up with the news - well done Finn. We followed that with the second part of our investigation into giftedness via a critique of Renzulli. Today we discussed whether intelligence changed over time and place. Here are some brief notes taken during our discussion:
Lauren and Amy say things that are considered intelligent change in different places; Finn adds the e.g. that if you spoke English in some countries that speak something else you might seem more intelligent for that reason than if you were in a country that already spoke english; William disagrees with Finn - he thinks you might be considered not intelligent if you couldn’t speak their own language Christopher agrees with Renzulli because you can be in a certain places require a certain kind of intelligence. Finn adds it is relative to the people who are around you. Casper agrees with Renzulli too because if you could unlock a door in the modern age that is average but if you could have done it in the cave age you would be a God.; Nathan and Aidhan disagree with Renzulli because if intelligence = learning skills to adapt to your environment then making stone tools is the same level of intelligence as fixing super engines in the modern age. I suggest this is also what Renzulli is saying. William, Nathan, Aidhan and I clarify by agreeing that perhaps what=intelligence never changes what does change is how the intelligence manifests itself.
After Renzulli, we went straight to talent time. Matthew and Connor had a look at the differences between putting the balloon on a dry wall and one that had steam on it. The idea is to compare static electricity in the drier winter months with the more humid air of summer. They found out that the balloon would not stay for any length of time, when charged, if the wall was a little moist. Aaron transferred his stopmotion onto FramebyFrame (a free Mac software programme designed especially for stop motion) and he also helped Frances who had created a jumping frog animation. There were a number of children ready for planning today. This is negotiated with me. Jake planned a tank history project with a focus on research skills, especially dissemination; Annie also focussed on research except she is doing a study on llamas; Katy planned a project on architecture to nurture her current passion on design.
After morning tea we started our critical literacy lessons - these focus on ideas around becoming increasingly aware of the choices authors make in constructing texts, learning to read between the lines at what is implied or what agendas might influence an author; examining representation, exclusion and inclusion and being aware that the different knowledge and experience that readers bring to texts influences their perception. Today we unpacked these terms (Casper explained representation brilliantly as portraying something in a certain light) and watched a couple of very short animations. We discussed what representation we witnessed and considered the message the author was trying to portray. Next week we will watch a third short clip and begin to critically review the movie using our critical literacy language.
John arrived for chess - a tragic day for Mr. K who was beaten by a student (well done William) for the first time. I guess I should be pleased to see the youngsters developing so well but...no... I'm plotting revenge instead : ) (though I don't fancy my chances : ) There was a little movement on the ladder today, though it was clear we have some children really into chess and others not so in this class. I do consider it a valuable (and compulsory) part of the programme so please, kids, remember to give it your best shot - that's what Pakiki kids strive to do.
After lunch we returned to Econ Island - today was the first day of real competition in the market with all the businesses stocking the same items - which of course drove prices down. The rest of the students were negotiating high wages and low prices in their attempt to end up with the most $, as well as their basic needs. Finn, Casper, Aaron, and Connor all proved astute bargainers with Frances winning the business section. We discussed competition and the law of supply and demand in our account of the scenario. Speaking of Frances, today was her last day with us after almost a year and a half, as she is shifting to Southland. Frances has proved herself to be an outstanding student with strengths in creativity and accuracy. We will miss her a lot and wish her all the best - we know she gives nothing less! Ka kite Frances - keep in touch.
To the rest of you all,
I will see you next week - keep watching those shares; see if you can predict what's happening next! : )
Scott.
Kia ora from Day 11,
We started our day talking about things that influence the market and how we can keep astride of what's going on. We looked at a news site online to see what has been happening in Europe lately and discussed how these political changes have an impact on the market. We then referred back to our complex and chaotic systems and started wondering which one the market fits into; how predictable is it? We then checked our investments and worked out whether we had earned any money or not. It was a mixed bag for most of us, thought the NZX50 hadn't opened today when we checked.
Affective domain study looked at Renzulli's theory of giftedness. We explored his claim that there are many kinds of intelligences. Many of us agreed with this, though we had two other schools of thought - one that said intelligence was a singular thing that amounted to a person's ability to learn (Nathan) and that any different ways of thinking -e.g. maths compared to literacy were skills rather than intelligences; and one that said intelligence was strongly connected and depended on a person's passion. I recorded the ideas as quickly as I could and will cut and paste the record at the end of the blog for those who are interested.
We moved onto a slightly extended talent time, to try and make up some time (Wednesday's term is a bit short due to respecting ANZAC day).
Frances started making a stykz animation. She created a story board and started putting it onto the computer. She had to learn the program which was a challenge. Next week she will try and get it finished. Casper started a stopmotion animation, his challenge was getting the clear pictures and having a good storyline. Next week he will try and making a second one taking care with the clarity of pictures. Jake was frustrated trying to find his published Arnhem account. He realised it wasnt done and it got typed up. Next week he will print and edit. Aidhan got all his drawings onto the computer for his animation. Next week he will try and get the timing right for the movements. Nathan suffered the challenge of the computer crahsing which made him lose his work!! Next week he will have to start this over. The lesson is to save as you go!!! Christopher also suffered computer failure - with Stykz. He moved onto stop animation. He is going to redo his stykz during lunch and play time. Next week with his stop motion he wants to add more detail. Aaron finished his non-violent stykz animation and began learning about stop motion (including how to use imovie) using Youtube clips. Next week he will start creating his movie proper. Finn finihsed stykz, started stop motion and found that it was extrememly boring for him ( a lesson in picking the right talent/passion project). Next week he is going to plan his passion project. Matthew and Connor conducted an experiment to see how long they could stick a electrically charged balloon on the wall. They did it 4 times with some success. They recorded their results and started write your experiment up. Next week they need to write their conclusions. William finihsed creating his bridge and started to test it (it looks great). The challenge was finding a good way to connect the pieces. Next week he will start to evaluate the bridge. Katy and Annie finsihed advertising for their Loud People company. Next week they will evaluate their project and plan their next one with Mr. K. Lauren and Amy practised their performance for their Shakespeare play. They made some changes (improving on Shakespeare??!). Next week they will add finishing touches and film it. Madeline wrote a poem for her journal. At first she tried one on the elements but that wasn't working so she switched to one about diamonds which came out very well. Next week she will work on some more writing for her journal - the end is in sight!
John arrived for chess tutoring. He has been helping the other classes for a couple of weeks but this is his first Wednesday due to ANZAC day and our trip to Animation Research Ltd. John has a lot of expertise and passion for chess and this has quickly transferred onto the children. I have noticed an obvious lift in excitement for chess. Today the children engaged in chess challenges and practised end game techniques with only a king vs king and queen.
After lunch we explored needs and wants, labour, leverage, wages and prices in our Econ Island simulation. We still had incentives and problems of scarcity to explore as well. Next week we introduce free market economy ideas of competition, and the law of supply and demand. We also had visitors from Clutha Valley School who came and watched some of what Pakiki Kids get up too. oh, here's the "intelligence" discussion record for you:
Cheers team, look forward to seeing you all next week.
Scott.
Kia ora from Day 10, our first Wednesday in Term 2.
Today began by investing our Pakiki dollars in the NZX 50. For many of the students this was exciting stuff : ) We looked at how we could use tools on the NZX market site to identify the trading pattern each company had and we used the Numbers program (excel for macintosh) to track and graph our investments. This is part of our economic systems study for the term. We moved from this to looking over some assessment from term one and deciding goals for ourselves for the coming term. Then it was off to Animation Research Ltd. to find out what the multi-award winning business does. The team at ARL had a nice balance of activities to engage the kids and an informative tour - I had a million questions : ) The animation work ARL are involved in had room for people whose talents ranged from art, design, electronics, graphics, maths, and physics. It was cool to hear the ARL team telling us they started off with passions very similar to many of our kids. A big thanks to Tom, John and all the team at ARL for providing such a great opportunity for our students to see one way they can harness their talents.
It was lunch by the time we got back to Pakiki. After lunch, we started our "Econ Island" study. This is a series of simulated activities that introduces us to a range of important economic concepts. Today started with looking at the problem of scarcity, the role of incentives, barter, and the point of money. Having taken part in the simulation the students reported on the activity using the language we had introduced. Most of the students were able to use this language in the correct context today. The trick will be remembering these concepts, so, if you get a chance to talk about any of these ideas during the week please do
: ) We finished off the day with chess. We now have a chess leaderboard and the students set about challenging each other to try and ascend the ladder. Nathan and I had a game where he made some incisive early moves - well done!
See you all next week - check your investments if you get the chance!
Ciao, Scott.
Hi all from the last Wednesday of term - Day 9.
Today we started off with a tech challenge - building a table that could hold as many books as possible ( we chose Horrible Histories) out of paper, 1 piece of thin card, popsicle sticks, straws and tape. We had a successful group manage to make an aesthetically satisfactory table that held 7 books - well done Aidhan, Nathan and Finn. Amy, Lauren, Katy and ANnie managed to hold 9 books but there were some stability issues and a lot of careful balancing needed. Still a very good effort. After tech challenge we rounded the morning off with talent/passion projects.
After play it was down to the serious business of reflections. I had created a term overview reflection that canvassed a lot of what we have learned over the first term. This allows me to check exactly where different kids are at with their understanding of key points and thinking tools as we move into term two. The students also had to do a short halfway progress report on their talent/passion projects and also had to reflect on pieces of work that will be included in their learning journals, at the end of the year. This was a lot of hard thinking and the students did very well. Extra well done Annie and Nathan who, having missed a few days this term, had a catch up poetry session that proved working under pressure was a good thing for these particular two students.
In the afternoon we moved into a you-choose session. This involved a series of activities the students could choose from, many of which have been ongoing throughout the term, with one easter idea thrown in for good measure. Many of the students chose chess, Christopher and Casper demonstrating excellent chess thinking skills while I engaged with their play. A number worked on talent time - Annie and Katy have met their goal for product construction and are now ready to move into advertising and sales. Matthew and Connor had a go at chess and the next step in their talent time - they managed to answer a series of questions on static electricity (Connor already had a lot of good knoweldge here) and then set about bending water with a balloon - their task next term on this will be to explain in terms of atoms what is happening when the water moves toward the charged balloon.
All in all a good last day,
I hope everyone has a great Easter break and I will see you all for term 2!
Cheers,
Scott.
Hi from day 8
This morning we started by unpacking a couple of quotes about talent from two very talented people - George Lucas and Albert Einstein.
I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive.
-Albert Einstein
Everybody has talent, it’s just a matter of moving around until you’ve discovered what it is.
- George Lucas
Once we had the meaning in our own words we discussed whether we agreed, disagreed or partly agreed with what George Lucas was saying. The children concluded that everybody does have a talent but Madeline noticed that circumstances (of place and socio-economic position of birth etc) can affect the kind of "talent journeys" we are able to take. We also recognised that the things different places and cultures value may alter what kind of talents are recognised in different places. Nathan added that these factors probably alter the way we manifest our talent. This discussion was the beginning of extending our affective domain studies from a study of ourselves per se, to a study of ourselves as gifted/Pakiki learners. This exploration will continue throughout the year. We followed this with more focus on our questioning skills. We read a few pages of our novel Frindle and the children questioned the viewpoints and assumptions the characters, and the author were making. We then moved into talent time mode.Today Matthew and Connor finished their element study. Next week they begin to explore the relationship between atoms and static electricity. William created the supports for his bridge and then tried problem solving his way around how to attach them to the structure he already has. This problem is still needing solution : ) Lauren and Amy watched Midsummer NIghts Dream and Romeo and Juliet and have decided to act out a scene from the latter. They have reversed the roles of the 'Juliet death scene' and Lauren has already memorised her lines. It is great to see these students getting so excited by Shakespeare - they were practising and writing lines every opportune moments throughout the day. Madeline has already researched Victorian life and wrote a diary of a Victorian maid for her 'school journal'. She showed a very good willingness to persist and extend her thoughts on this writing task. Katy and Annie were busy creating as many bracelets as they could. They have added a bracelet/necklace package to their markets. I have bought two to use as bookmarks for Frindle : ) Finn, Casper and Christopher all worked on Stykz animation. They showed a vast improvement in getting their animations to flow today. Aidhan finished the first phase of his stopmotion! - Well done! He now has to work out how to put it onto imovie and to use green screen tricks to create the backgrounds that he wants. Frances completed her bird eats bee flipbook - well done. It is nicely detailed and carefully put together. Jake found out about the 'hunger winter' that followed Operation Market Garden, some reasons why the operation was a failure for the Allies and put together some of his own thoughts about the value of the operation. He is sounding more and more like an historian : ) Nathan worked hard on his game maker, creating some sprites (characters) and problem solving his way through some technical difficulties.
After talent time we moved into 'we are nearing the end of term' finishing mode, making sure students had finished their portraits and I am from poems. Matthew showed he enjoys creating a poetic turn of phrase and works best doing this without a lot of planning. Connor has his poem ready for a final edit, and Annie, Frances, Lauren, Amy and Aidhan all completed their portraits. The children who had their portraits painted and dry already compiled a list on what they thought made them a Pakiki Kid and used these ideas to frame their portraits.
In the afternoon we looked at some cartoons on giftedness and had a discussion around what it is like being a Pakiki Kid, and how this affects relationships with colleagues, how being identified as a gifted learner affects their experiences in mainstream class. There were some interesting insights, and this seemed a valuable discussion for children to reflect on their learning relationships, and to hear from others who had both similar and different relationships. Everybody in the class contributed to this discussion and we recorded our thoughts. Next week we will continue to explore our Pakiki-ness. We finished the day with some systems activities and chess, before clean-up and reflections.
Thanks crew,
see most of you next week (safe travels William and Madeline!)
Cheers, Scott.
Kia ora from day 7
We had a visitor from Germany visit us today to present and discuss the differences between Germany and New Zealand life. This was very timely, as we had been noticing for some time that the Kaplan's Depth and Complexity tools have "relate across time" but do not have "relate across space" or something similar to help us focus on the importance that space and location make to the way people think and act. I put the challenge to the children to find some time to create an 'across space' icon. Top marks for Finn who was the first to come up with a design, without any further prompting I might add. Once I gave Finn's design a space on the wall, for us to consider, many other kids got involved - brilliant. This prompted Finn to improve how well he had drawn his idea! What a treat for a teacher eh?
We had begun our learning with some more questioning practice. First, we asked questions of our own talent/passion projects. Second, we asked any old crazy question that was bugging us and needed to be in the question log. Of course many students used this latter opportunity to present their particular brand of humour, laughing is very important at Pakiki. Luckily it is typical of gifted kids to indulge in a quirky sense of humour. We kept on our questioning theme - but this time with our Socratic, challenging kind of hat on, that I have begun to refer to as thinking like a lawyer. Here we look to challenge assumptions, clarify meaning and probe for reasons and evidence. Today, I started reading aloud a short novel, Frindle, to the students. This is the amusing story of a gifted kid in an American elementary school who invents an alternative word for 'pen' and watches its meaning catch hold. We used this as a springboard to practice our Socratic approach - questioning, probing and challenge some of the ideas and actions of the characters.
Following morning tea we engaged in a fluent day with students doing different things, mostly around talent/passion time and portrait work. Several children have now completed their portraits - Connor, Matthew, Aaron, Jake, Madeline, William, and Casper, well done! I'm sure everyone has a better appreciation for the usefulness of adding maths to their art pieces. Over the next two weeks this unit will usher in the beginning of students discussing what being a pakiki kid means to them. This exploration of understanding what "giftedness" means to each of us will continue throughout the year.
Animators invested their talent time in an exploration of stykz - a computer animation program using stick people. I downloaded many extra characters, backgrounds, etc. for them and this was an opportunity to discover what was there, and become familiar with the software. There were some humorous results, though mostly in a tragic sense. This is a distinct pattern I have noticed with children's ( dare I say it is mostly boys') stick animations. I'm not sure why there is this fascination for 'black comedy'. Next week they need to construct a storyboard which we will work on and then o.k for animating. William made a great looking side of his bridge today. He has spent time making his struts strong and today had to problem solve how he might successfully attach them. He has gone with a combination of tape and dual staple system at the moment (untested)- we look forward to seeing the tension and compression it can handle. Jake worked on his battle of Arnhem study. This time he started working on thinking about it and gathering evidence from the German perspective. Next week I want him to consider the ethics of the operation (Market Garden) and its wider consequences. Madeline wrote a poem and gathered some riddles for her 'school journal'. Next week she is going to write a short story. I have challenged her to use Raymond Huber's trick of limiting the pages ( 1o r 2, I say) and starting with the end then writing her way to it. Katy and Annie researched what percentage of their population they needed to cover in their survey. Their excursions last lunchtime had given them 20 names. They figured their full potential market was about 50 children at NEVNS ( I think they have neglected a further potential market in the junior block), and they found to have a survey that had an error rate of 5% they needed to get to 44% of their population. So, they surveyed 2 more and set about working on graphing their results. Their conclusion appears to be their is a healthy demand for friendship bracelets in the NEVNS/Pakiki senior school community. They have also worked out a price point. They finished the day with a company name, a logo, and a motto, and had researched the qualities of a strong advertisement that they have just started creating. Lauren and Amy, who had continued their Shakespeare research team work with a visit to the library out of school, collected some of their facts using a "puppet pals" program on the ipad. While the characters didn't match (it has a cowboy theme) Lauren and Amy managed to voice over interesting and useful factual information about Shakespeare, including giving a dramatic element and making good use of humour (very important to a Shakespeare study). All in all a pretty solid talent time session.
In the afternoon, we had a mixture of portrait completion, chess and reflections. Well done all! Oh, we forgot to check the brainteaser results! - I will save them for next week.
Ciao, see you all next week,
Scott.
Kia ora from day 6
Today, thanks to the United States' approach to displaying the calendar date, is world pi day! So, we started off with some pi exploration. We quickly figured out our relative expertise in the subject via a line up and then set to two different tasks relative to our skill level. William (who was today's pi master), Nathan, Christopher, Finn and Connor worked on an interactive site that challenged them to find the area, radius and diameter of varying sized circles (actually a circular paddock inhabited by a hungry goat). William was able to manage this solo and needed virtually no assistance (in fact he proved to be more of an assistor, if such a word exists). Nathan and Christopher demonstrated a steely determination to figure this out, once I had showed them how and became much more fluent in their efforts. Finn and Connor were on the cusp of getting it and I'm sure with a little more time would have coped admirably.
The rest of the class grabbed string, a pencil, a calculator and a piece of paper and began recording the circumference and diameter of circular items in the class. They then had to divide - you guessed it- the circumference by the diameter and record what they got. Some of them (Aidhan for one) got some extremely accurate measurements - especially of the class clock. We ended this session with a quick discussion of pi's origins, its irrationality and transcendental nature and the reasons we were unable to get it exactly in our explorations.
After this mental edge warm up we went straight to talent/passion time. Matthew and Connor decided on their element to study (they chose magnesium and actinium). This research seemed to fascinate them - they worked through playtime on it, were planning on working through lunch and, Matthew particularly, was ready to go back to it at the expense of anything else all day - hard to complain about that really isn't it? William constructed plans of his bridges, gathered resources and constructed 4 of the strongest paper poles I have seen at Pakiki. Amy and Lauren found information on Shakespeare including his family tree and a categorised list of his plays. I have suggested next week they try the many books I found at the library to fill in the gaps in their Shakespeare journal. Katy and Annie read about and created a market survey for their friendship bracelet business. They made a sample product to show people during the survey. They have conducted their survey in the class and included one student from the wider North East Valley school community. Next week they need to canvas their market further. Jake found out and wrote up some useful information on the Battle of Arnhem Bridge and its contextual relationship to the wider Operation Market Garden. His next step is to focus on the details of the battle itself and to try and find some interview footage to embellish his research. Madeline invested this time working on her portrait (which is very well done) and worked on her journal after play instead. Finn, Aaron, Frances, Casper and Christopher continued on with their flipbooks - these are basically complete now - well done. Finn and Christopher created a fish swimming scene and this workd very well - Finn's fish moves eloquently in and out of seaweed and his animation is pretty much seamless. Aaron created a waving man, Frances ahs a bee being gobbled up by a bird, and Casper showed a bullet being fired and crashing into a wall. All of the animators have the idea that simplicity = more realistic motion. It will be interesting to see how they adapt this idea into their computer animation program next week. Aidhan completed a large number of shots on his stop motion animation. He has used a plain backdrop and has thought through ways he can use a green screen to overcome some of the limitations of using lego - excellent thinking flexibly and thinking ahead Aidhan.
After play we swapped to portraits and poetry. Everyone is at different stages with this work and so there was a lot of individualised guidance. Because passion/time is now well underway this means that students who are waiting for me often get 'bonus' time during this session to continue with their passion projects. While this can make progress on the self-portraits and poetry a little slower, it does demonstrate that many of the students are striving for accuracy, are not content with mediocrity, and still can make efficient use of their time (by going on with talent projects). Some of the self-portraits have reached painting stage. Connor, William, Aaron, Jake and Casper all got to begin painting today, first underpainting in white, then layering on progressively darker shades in light of what their black and white photo dictated. There were some solid results and I am very keen to see how these will turn out on completion. Frances and Lauren worked hard on accurate proportions and showed a keen willingness to revise work that wasn't just so (as Madeline had earlier in the day). Katy also reworked some of her drawing (which is very accurate) and Matthew revised his shoulders and worked hard on making his hair accurate (his is looking quite like his photo as well), and Nathan's is also very accurate and ready to paint next week. Christopher completed his I am from poem (he had even worked on it during play) and managed to publish on his issuu.com site, well done - he now has 2 publications on this.
After lunch we turned to exploring chaotic systems and fractals. First we watched a YouTube clip, pausing to discuss interesting ideas, especially the butterfly effect. Nathan, Aaron, William, Finn, Madeline, Aidhan, and Annie all showed an interest and expressed their ideas regularly around this topic. We followed this up by exploring fractals on the computer (I had loaded a website fractal generator for the students to explore). There was some keen interest in this - notably Frances, Matthew, and William of the first group on the computers. I will need to talk to Nathan, Casper, and Finn re what they made of fractals next week - or feel free to wiki me!
Have to go - an interesting meeting at Concord school on another gifted programme awaits me.
Cheers all, see you next week!
Scott.
7 March
Kia ora from day 5,
A few kids away again today with a sports leadership day on at the Edgar stadium. Nonetheless, the rest of us had a productive morning. We started with a maths challenge - getting to 42 without using the digits 4 or 2. These kind of challenges are easy to provide differentiation to the students. Those for whom maths is not a strength are able to challenge themselves and those who find it easy can easily be pushed into more difficult equations by suggesting the use of BEDMAS, exponents and so on. It was great to see William rising to this challenge this morning. We turned from maths to Socrates and his questioning method for the rest of our mental edge learning this morning. We looked briefly at the context of Socrates' work and then looked over a series of Socratic questions I had prepared for the students. Today's questions all focussed on conceptual clarification and clarifying meaning; e.g. what is the nature of..? what exactly does this mean? Can you give an example? We read a Greek folktale and used our questions to try and find questions to explore more deeply what was going on. Casper and William were particularly astute at this today, and the overall questioning standard rose quickly across the course of the session.
We moved from mental edge to affective domain. At the moment we are involved in two affective domain units - poetry and art. The students were able to choose which one they would go on with today. The class has a laminated sheet, with the products that need completed this term, posted on the wall. Being allowed to choose when they invest their time as they attempt to complete their products is a good opportunity to allow choice in the classroom, to differentiate according to interests and also encourages development of managing oneself - both a habit of mind for us, and a key competency in the national curriculum. The striving for accuracy in the portrait work is fantastic. Casper has done such a fine job of measuring out his proportions that his self-portrait has a good likeness, as did Aaron and William. Amy took on board the 'Leonardo' approach and is making excellent progress, Matthew fine tuned his mouth and eyes and improved his portrait immensely. Jake and Connor have all also done very well, with completely different styles. They have got themselves to the stage where they have started exploring painting techniques - underpainting and shadowing, in preparation for painting their images.
At the same time, Lauren, Christopher and Finn worked on their poetry. FInn persevered trying to find a fitting last line, Lauren brainstormed ideas and Christopher started developing last week's brainstorm. He managed to draft a simplistic draft of his poem and has now developed this further with a great deal more poetic style.
After morning tea we turned to talent time. Connor and Matthew took to finding out about atoms, found out plenty of information then conducted a short experiment showing how sugar atoms fit in the spaces between water molecules. Finn, Christopher, Casper, Aaron and Frances beavered away at animated flip books. They have learnt that they must think where they put their subject, the importance of keeping the subject the same size, and the need to be very careful in the amount of movement they include with each frame. William found out a lot about truss bridges including some differences and similaritles about the different varieties. Amy and Lauren investigated some facts around Shakespeare's life and created a clever study aid to help with the final presentation of their work. Aidhan made excellent progress constructing and beginning to take photos for his lego-robot stop motion animation.
After lunch our sports leaders returned in time to join us for a discussion of complex and chaotic systems. We explored the traffic system, unpacked its components, and figured out how as a complex system, it was both unknowable fully (we blamed the input of people) but reasonable predictable ( as all of us who have tried to get a park outsied school at 3 p.m know). We finished with a chess session - the different groups investigated en passant and the touch piece play it rule.
Thanks for a great days effort team,
See you all next week,
Scott.
29 February
Hi and welcome to day 4.
A quiet day for student numbers with 8 children away (many are on camp) meant a great time to get talent conferencing completed - lots of one-on-one time. Today the scientists started their atom discovery. Matthew and Connor found out about nucleus, protons and electrons (well, to be fair Connor already knew a bit) how they relate to elements and what kind of charges they carry. They are currently trying to find out what it means if an atom has a neutral charge. Connor knows that atomic charges have something to do with electricity but is not sure why that means our hair stands on end. A good start scientists! The animators were shown how to create a flipbook; we stressed the importance of thinking mathematically, as well as artistically, so that the movement is not too jumpy; and of being pedantic about detail and accuracy in both your subjects and your background. Many of the students drafted and reflected on a first flipbook. They all noticed areas for improvement in the way they had thought through their first go; Finn realised he had to shift the positioning of his character; Christopher decided next time his character needed to move a little more - great metacognition. Others, like Amy and Frances, decided to develop their character and use the scaling technique to reduce it to a size suitable for their flipbook. Jake conferenced with me and designed a history research project on the World War Two Battle of Arnhem. His project will go beyond details and facts and consider the story from different perspectives and consider ethical implications.
This talent time was held across the day with different groups working with me and on their projects at different times. Meanwhile, we were elaborating on the suggestion "what if students got to run the school. Jake, Frances and Matthew did a fine job of digging into a central idea, with Jake concluding that the human race would end after a sharp decline in education had us lose the ability to farm crops.
We spent the rest of the pre morning tea session working on our poems. Many of us read some "I am from" poems. These take the students a little while to see past the interesting language. Well done to Frances for her clever insights, and Matthew and Connor for their persistence. We recorded the patterns we noticed in the poems - that they all talked about people, places, family history, activities, possessions, food, culture and feelings that were significant in their lives. Amy got her poem published, Jake wrote a second draft of his which is only one shot away from completing, and several students brainstormed ideas ready for next week.
After morning tea we practised our questioning skills by investigating the difference between open and closed questions, and introducing the idea of drip, puddle and lake questions that we first looked at last year. Today we had a student hide with a picture. The rest of the class asked questions that had only yes or no answers and tried to recreate the image that the volunteer (Connor)was looking at; we followed this by getting another volunteer (Aaron) with a different picture. This time the class could only ask open questions. When we reflected on the results we noticed that the second effort allowed us to get a view of the picture much quicker, though the closed questions did provide some advantages in getting specific detail. We spent the rest of the morning working on our talent time projects (see the first paragraph : )
After lunch we got conceptual with our systems study again. We talked more about abstract and real - the kids love this and came up with some interesting questions and queries, e.g. is the concept of abstract ideas itself an abstract idea? are hallucinations and illusions abstractions? We were discussing this to remind ourselves that the categories we might classify systems under are abstractions. We then took a couple of typical categories for systems - simple and complicated and set about classifying systems we could see around the school. We then reflected on our decision making and noticed that it wasn't as straightforward as we had first thought. Finn, and the two scientists - Connor and Matthew, noticed that even simple systems have complicated atomic structures : ) We finished our day with a quick chess lesson and practice.
Cheers for a fun days learning team,
Scott.
22 February
Welcome from day 3!
Today we started with a warm up that aimed for flexibiity (a range of ideas) and originality. We had 5 and a half minutes to find unusual uses for hair clippings. Once the time was up the students were required to rank their ideas according to the most original. I think pom poms might have been the winner on this one, though Matthews highly organised approach to recording his ideas also needs mentioned. Once our brains were going we turned to fine tuning our questioning skills more. We watched a YouTube clip from whose line is it anyways where the contestants were playing the question game we had practised in pairs the week before. This time we had a go in teams with a theme - we tried 'going to the zoo'. The results were fun and required flexible and imaginative thinking - as Nathan cleverly pointed out in his reflection when asked to find a habit of mind he had used today. Stand-out performances were delivered by Annie, Aidhan (whose piano playing is coming on in leaps and bounds!) Nathan, Katy, Casper, William and Christopher.
We turned to our poetry after this. Several of us had published our mundane poems the week before (Maddie, Amy,Katy and Aaron) so these four moved onto the "Where I am from" poem. First, we brainstormed all the different ways you could 'be from' something - people, places, traditions, dreams, activities etc. We then read several I am from poems and highlighted language that appealed to us. Finally, we had a go at writing our own. The results were excellent - Madeline and Amy have their poems ready to publish in record time without skimping on quality, and Aaron and Katy have completed a first draft ready to expand next week. These four can all be commended on their poetry skill and focus. The others, many of whom also deserve commending (quality has its own pace) continued on with the editing of their first draft. Well done Connor for his persistence in getting his fan poem right; Casper wrote a fantastic personified rain poem; Christopher is publishing another great example of personification in his pen poem; Nathan has a crazy Dr. Seuss style poem that sounds like it could be a great rhyming picture book. Everyone can feel pleased with their approach to poetry so far - well done.
After morning tea we worked on our portraits. I had printed the black and white photos of ourselves and we first looked at a few of these and reminded ourselves what value meant as an art term (not the $ value). Several students remembered from the previous week - next week I am looking for 100%! We then took a seriously mathematical approach to measuring our facial proportions and drawing our portraits. It is hard to note a standout here because everyone was highly focused and attempting to improve their skills; but I have to mention Jake, who typified the artistic prowess and determination to strive for an accurate likeness that the whole class was demonstrating. During this time I was able to conference with a few children re their passion projects. Earlier the students who are doing talent groups this term had given me their decision about the group they wanted to be a part of. Yesterday I collected a large pile of relevant library books ready for projects to get underway in earnest and the students are rearing to go. Some of the individual passion project plans already show an improvement from last year in the student's thinking about goal setting and planning. I am looking forward to seeing these in action and the results.
We finished the middle session by being put into our chess groups who had a lesson on knight moves, stalemate and castling (depending on what group you were in) as well as some practise play. Thanks to Chris for doing lunch for us - I hope Finn managed to get you playing some chess : )
In the afternoon we looked at systems - we examined a definition; explored the difference between abstract and real (Finn was a great help here) and then had to decide on categories for a list of systems I had provided small groups with. We discovered how much categorising depended on perspective, or 'each of our different ideas about things' as Aaron put it; and how the similarities and differences between things often blurred the lines of categories. We finished with reflection time, focussing on habits of minds we had used, and had 5 minutes at the end for another round of the question game, which seems to be a big hit.
Phew big day!
p.s. we now have the new computers up and running (they are loading software updates behind me as I write!) BIG thanks to Brendan McCane for all his knowledge and assistance.
Cheers all - see you next week. (p.s. discussion points for those inspired are the difference between abstract and real; and the importance of perspective : )
Ciao for now,
Scott. oh...here's the day plan:
Warm Up
unusual uses for hair clippings
Mental Edge: Questioning
Ignorance Logging
The Question Game: Youtube Clip - what techniques are used?
Affective Domain/Talent:
Playing with Poetry: Part 2 - edit your poems for publishing; where I am from poem reading
Affective Domain/Talent TIme
Self-portraits - proportion and value: Part two printing photos and sketching YOU : ) examine your photo and start shading or making ‘notes’; conferencing talent projects
Chess: Into Chess groups; lesson # 1 and play
Systems: Lesson # 1 - what is a system; categorising systems
Reflection Practice
Clean Up (10 mins)
15 February
Howdy all from day two of the year. Here is today's dayplan.
Wednesday 15th February
Warm UpWhat if plants grew limbs?
Mental Edge:The Question Game
Affective Domain/Talent:Playing with Poetry
Affective Domain/TalentSelf-portraits - proportion and value
Chess: Lesson; pre-assessment and play : )
Mental Edge/Affective Domain:Philosophy -”Responsibility”
ReflectionClean Up (10 mins)
We started with a creative thinking exercise to warm up our brains. In this exercise students aim to create ideas fluently and to elaborate on their ideas. The skill is in providing reasons for their thoughts and trying to dig deeper into possible effects and consequences if each idea they think of were true. During this lesson we also discussed ideas about academic humility in e.g. avoiding talking in absolutes. We remembered (and were introduced) to Socrates' idea that the only thing we know for certain is that we know nothing for certain. Finn countered Socrates by saying he was certain the black shape on his Ferrari jacket was a horse.
We practised our questioning skills with a couple of rounds of the questioning game. Here participants try to respond to each other only with questions. This was challenging. At morning tea we all watched an entertaining clip of Whose Line is it Anyway where the comedians played this game.
We finished the morning session by working on poetry writing. It is awesome to see students who don't consider themesleves poetic to take up the challenge, show persistence and demonstrate their creativity. Our emphasis was on playing with words, both in actual use and choice of language and techniques as well as the way we laid our text on the page. We read and analysed some poems about mundane objects from well known poets and then played with writing about everyday objects in our class. We wrote about curtains, vacuum cleaners, sellotape, pens, pots, computers, water drops, fans, chess pieces and many more. Some students, like William, wrote several small poems, others like Amy wrote longer pieces. Some drafted easily and revised for perfection, some worked hard showing persistence and flexible thinking to drag their poems into existence but everyone got something going. We talked about writing as sculpting and the need to put a 'lump of clay' (words) on the paper and start crafting them. This lesson was the beginning of a larger poetry unit where we will craft poems about ourselves and our background.
In the middle session we began exploring value and proportion in art. We looked at black and white photos and talked about the value and contrast; we examined some of Da Vinci's notebook drawings on proportion and talked a lot about mapping the face and focusing carefully on the shape of facial features. We practiced drawing in proportions, with students taking turn photographing themselves and loading this onto iphoto to be changed to black and white. Later we will use these photos to create portraits and paint them in black and white. We will complete the paintings by putting our own 'values' behind our portraits.
Before lunch we completed chess pre-assessments from the Otago Chess Club. The beginning players practised playing chess and today learnt about the role of the bishop.
After lunch we had a philosophy discussion about responsibility. We were investigating how we decide when someone is responsible for consequences. We examined a number of cases and considered how factors like age, education, the law and intention impact on whether we think someone is responsible for events. We notcied how complex these issues can be and concluded our discussion for the day with William's idea that many factors need to be considered in each case. To this Finn added the clause that perhaps that is why we have law as the final arbiter. The students were very capable of interesting and deep thinking and everybody contributed actively. We recorded our ideas, which I will photograph and put up on the blog and/or on people's issuu libraries soon.
At the end of the day we had our first solo reflection. The students made good progress in providing rationales for their reactions to today's learning experiences. Reflection practice aims for students to reflect both on their feelings and their thinking during the day.
A great day team - looking forward to eharing about passion project ideas and starting talent time next week!
Ka Kite, Mr. K
Welcome to a new year of Wednesday Pakiki. Today we were welcomed onto the school with a formal mihi whakatau in the library. Prior to that we had introduced ourselves and played a name game to get to know each other better. We also hastily learnt a waiata and practised our marae protocol to be ready for the mihi whakatau. The Pakiki students were fantastic and the N.E.V kids were very welcoming and showed us around the school. When we came back we got into a technology challenge - to build a pataka (storehouse) at least a metre in height out of newspaper, string and tape. We had 30 minutes. Most everyone worked well together and there was some success and innovation on display. Students were rewarded with Pakiki dollars (our reward system this year). These dollars will later be 'invested' on the stock exchange during our study of the monetary system.
Much of the rest of the day was spent profiling - gathering information about our learning styles, pre-assessing our knowledge of mental edge activities and our understanding of what a system is We also found time to play (and for some, begin to learn) chess and to practise our reflection writing. We also investigated issu.com - a site where students will be able to collect their year's work in a personal electronic 'library'.
It was a successful first day with a great group of students. I am looking forward to next week. Here is the day's plan, which I will post each week, and some photos from today. Cheers!
Wednesday 8th February
280 minutes
Morning = 115 min
Warm Up/Ice Breaker:
Circular introductions using duck or ball.
World’s fastest Marae Protocol lesson
Name Tag/Name Roulette
Talent: Singing waiata - E Tu Kahikatea
Mihi Whakatau
Mental Edge: Technology Challenge - Te Hanga Potaka
Middle = 90 minutes
Finish tech challenge
Talent
Overview and Profiling
Renzulli: Profiling
Mental Edge: Pre-Assessment
Chess: Lesson - and play : )
Afternoon = 75 minutes
Systems: pre-assessment
Monitoring Sheets
What is a System??!!
Brainstorm and categorise systems
Reflection Practice
Clean Up (10 mins)
Game (5 mins)